


Running up that hill

by speakslow



Category: IT (1990), IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Baseball Eddie, Bisexual Richie Tozier, Boarding School, Coming to terms with orientation, Eddie New Kid, F/M, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Minor Violence, No Smut, POV Alternating, POV Eddie Kaspbrak, POV Richie Tozier, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Rated T but Dirty Language, Roommates, Schemer Richie, also i dont know anything about baseball lol, early 1990s, i've mentioned it before but a bi character with a complete lack of info about bisexuality, masturbation mentions, mentions of child abuse, mild disdain to friends to mutual pining to heh, minor injury, weed mentions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-04-17 22:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 46,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14199408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakslow/pseuds/speakslow
Summary: When Eddie Kaspbrak's mother gets remarried, she sends him off to Catholic boarding school. Will it be exactly what he pictures:same old prison, new location?Or will it be something else entirely?myoh my god they were roommatesstory, loosely inspired byDead Poets Society(but it's set in the fall of 1992)





	1. Saint Stanislaus Prep AKA Saint Cock-n-balls, Prick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie's first day at boarding school

_I should be happy. I’ve wanted her to leave me alone my entire life, and now I’m going to be alone. Throw a penny in the fountain, Eddie. Got your wish already._

The dorm rooms were narrow rectangles with tiny windows and matching sets of ancient wooden furniture on either long side: twin bed, dresser, desk and chair. Whomever Eddie Kaspbrak’s roommate was destined to be had already been there, and staked his claim to the right. A suitcase and a giant boom box were tossed haphazardly over the bed. A pair of grotesque looking chucks were left dead center on the floor. A stock-pile of comic books and cassette tapes spilled over the top of the desk.

Eddie sat hunched over on his own bed, eyes stuck on those sneakers. He flinched when his mother began speaking again.

“Eddie-bear, you’re going to be fine.” Her expression didn't match her words, but the cadence of her voice was cheery enough to fool an outsider into believing she meant it. “Clark is right: you need to grow up a little bit. It’s time, and this is a fine school, really, you’re going to get a first-rate education, and you’ll be able to get into any college—”

“Ma,” Eddie whined, cutting her off. “You don’t have to keep telling me the same stuff, okay?” She only regurgitated the words that her new husband provided her. He believed that sending Eddie to boarding school was the best course of action to benefit everyone in the ‘family.’

_We’re a family now, and this what people usually do to family, right? Send them away. Treat them like they’re incapable of taking care of themselves for seventeen years and then cut them loose._

When Sonia sat Eddie down to tell him she planned to remarry, relief was the first feeling to come to the surface. Relief, because maybe it meant she’d be so distracted by the new person in her life she’d stop devoting all her time to treating Eddie like a porcelain doll. Maybe he might enjoy the last two years of high school. Maybe he’d even have a dad.

But Clark Chersky didn't want to be Eddie's dad. He saw Eddie as simply an obstacle between himself and Sonia, one that needed to be removed, though he framed his suggestions positively. He was their benefactor, funding a better life. Not only could they afford to send Eddie to a good school, but Sonia didn't need to work a dead-end job anymore. Win-win. Sonia fell for it hook, line, and sinker. It was remarkably easy for her to do an about-face when she had someone else to focus her attention on. 

 “So, you have everything, right? Your medicine and your—”

“Ma, we both know I don’t really need it.”

She stiffened, pressing her lips into a line as her eyes pleaded with him. “But you’re going to keep up with your regim—”

“Sure,” he agreed, addressing her shiny new shoes.

“Do you need me to stay with you for the orientation?”

Eddie shook his head. “No, I don’t need you to stay. I’m supposed to wear my uniform, right?” He ran a hand through his soft brown hair and looked down at his red polo and khaki shorts.  _Goodbye, choice._

“Yes, you have to change. I can go into the hallway and wait—”

He stood up abruptly and wrapped his arms around his mother’s plump middle. “You can just go home; it’s a long drive.”

Sonia sighed against his shoulder. He was taller than her by three inches—which wasn’t saying much—but in her arms he still felt small. Protected; like all the shitty things she’d done were somehow erased, or maybe he’d imagined them. But the duffel bag full of his pills on the floor beside their feet reminded him that he was a fool to even entertain those thoughts.

“I love you, Eddie.”

“I love you, too.” He did, and sometimes he hated himself for it.

 

***

 

Eddie  _tried_   to pay attention to the Headmaster’s speech, he  _did_ , but the wool pants itched him on the back of his legs. A stinging, biting itch, as prickly as cactus needles. The man's deep voice echoed through the cavernous chapel, droning a morose welcome statement to the student body, who filled every single seat in the wooden pews. Each of them wore a gray uniform identical to Eddie’s. He wondered if they were all as itchy as he was but years of experience had just made them better at ignoring it.

“Last but not least, I’d like to issue a special welcome to the new boys; those just joining our family. We hope that you’ll find a home here at Saint Stan’s, and that your years with us will be fruitful and teeming with knowledge.”

_Me, he’s talking to me. I’m a new boy and I’m supposed to be listening._

Eddie gave it a valiant attempt, but the valleys of flesh behind each of his knees were the only thing in the universe he could focus on. He squirmed his ass against the bench beneath him, trying to remedy the issue without drawing attention to himself.

“Got ants in your pants?”

The voice came from directly beside Eddie’s left ear, making his shoulders shrug of their own volition. It was a good voice, warm as fresh cookies, but raspy too, like his chain-smoking Aunt Ida’s.

“Aye, a wee scared one has joined our midst,” the voice continued, morphing into a phony, botched accent. It belonged to another student, a boy—obviously—Saint Stanislaus was an all-boys prep school. “I tell ye’ child, they might eat ya’ alive in this merciless hell pocket.”

_Annoying. Annoying, goofy, pest who can’t do an Irish brogue to save his life._

“Can you shut up?” He hissed it out of the side of his mouth. “It’s my first day and I don’t need to get into trouble already.”

“Darling, I  _know_   it’s your first day,” he hummed, chuckling as he licked his lips. Eddie couldn’t see it, but he heard the wet smack of them, felt hot breath against his earlobe. “I know, ‘cause I ain’t never seen ya’ before. Trust me, I’da remembered you.”

 _Darling? Who in the fuck does he think— No you know what? Don’t turn around, don’t turn around._  

Drawing a lungful of dusty church air, Eddie willed himself not to wheeze. “Ain’t never is a double negative. Your parents are wasting their money sending you to this school.”

“Well, well, well,” he drawled, and Eddie could tell he was impressed. “The little kitty has claws, huh?”

Jiggling his head side to side, Eddie blustered, “I’m not a kitty, or a darling, or scared. I’m just itchy and I hate these pants and I wish I didn’t get sent to this fucking school.” He felt his eyes welling up as soon as the words passed through his lips.

_You **are too**  scared, you big dumb baby._

“Kid, I think you just read the minds of every friggin’ boy sitting in this chapel,” he whispered, his tone gentler. “You should take that act on the road. Make a killing.”

A hand touched Eddie on his shoulder. Big; bigger than he expected it to be. The touch burned as warm as that voice, and he closed his eyes, blinking the tears away.

“You got a name?”

“Eddie,” he whispered, nearly choking on it

“Hold on.” The hand released its grip and the hot breath resumed puffing against his face. Eddie could smell him: tobacco and bubble gum. “Eddie? Edward Kaspbrak?”

“Um, yeah,” Eddie whispered uneasily. He turned around slowly. “How did you know my name?”

The voice belonged to a skinny boy with curly dark hair that looked like it had never met a hairbrush and glasses so big and thick they took up half of his face. His suit jacket was wrinkled and one of his shirt tails flapped down out of his slacks. He hadn’t bothered to knot the tie around his neck and his uniform lacked a regulation belt. When he grinned his two front teeth stuck down like Bugs Bunny. “I know your name,” he intoned, clasping his hands in front of his chest, “because we’re gonna be roomies.” His eyelashes were a smudgy blur fluttering behind the coke bottle lenses.

Eddie’s mouth dropped open. He panted for air, chest hitching up and down. There was no longer any use in fighting the urge to wheeze. His lungs protested, whistling and constricting inside his chest. He groped down the front of his slacks and pulled out his inhaler, sucking a desperate gasp of the cool mist. 

Four hundred heads turned to look at him in unison, whipping so quickly that the inertia of their collective movement produced the slightest hint of a  _whooshing_   sound. Eddie’s heart skipped a beat at the exact second that the chatty boy burst into a braying, hysterical laugh behind him.

“Boys, would you like the floor, or may I continue?” The Headmaster’s eyes stared right at Eddie’s beet-red face.

“No, Headmaster. I mean, YES, Headmaster,” Eddie squeaked, adding, “Sir,” for good measure. A brief murmur hovered above the room—the entire school talking about him at once, he knew. He breathed deeply, trying to steady his sputtering nerves. A few seconds after his heart began to calm down, the bespectacled boy’s mouth was close to his cheek, whispering. 

“Welcome to Saint Cock-n-balls. I’m Richie.”

 

***

 

After his speech, the Headmaster dismissed them for supper and the rest of the boys filed through the lobby and into the dining hall with a level of urgency similar to cattle moving towards a slaughter room floor. Eddie gracefully ducked in and out between slower moving underclassmen in an attempt to lose Richie in the crowd.

_I’d rather eat alone every single night than sit and put up with nicknames and accents and stupid jokes._

Eddie was one of the first boys in line for food, and in turn, one of the first to choose a place to sit. He made a beeline across the room and settled on the furthest back corner table, sitting so that he faced the wall. Only a few minutes went by before a couple voices behind him interrupted his meal.

“Hey, uh, you’re that asthma kid. This is  _our_   usual table.”

“Ben don’t say it like that; it’s so rude.”

“Well, what am I supposed to say?”

Eddie looked up at them. One was a pale and husky blond boy, the other a tall, broad-shouldered boy with dark skin and a friendly smile. Both of their ties were untied and hung loose. The blond boy had already untucked his shirt. "I'm sorry for taking your table. I just didn't know where else to--"

“No, no, it’s okay,” the taller boy assured him gently. He took the seat opposite Eddie. “You can sit with us. I’m Mike.”

The other boy took the seat beside his friend. “I didn’t mean he couldn’t sit with us, I was just  _saying—”_  He sighed, giving Eddie a little smirk. “I’m Ben.”

“Nice to meet you guys. I’m Eddie.”

The two boys got down to eating and talking, and Eddie appreciated that they seemed to be pretending he wasn't there. He didn't want to talk to anyone at that exact moment, not really. Poking at his tepid food, he listened to the two of them discuss a project Ben had worked on over the summer. A proposal to the Administration to rebuild the decrepit bleachers on either side of the activities yard. Mike didn’t think they’d go for it: not enough funding.

“Sorry, we’re being rude again.” Mike scrunched up his nose and smiled. “So, you’re new? First day?”

“Yeah.” Eddie spoke to his green beans.

“What do you think so far?” Ben chuckled after he asked it. “I know that’s such a stupid question; you’ve been here like five minutes.”

Sighing, Eddie just let it all hang out. “I fucking hate it so far. I think I'm allergic to these pants. This food is gross. And my roommate is a completely annoying idiot.”

“That’s pretty much how everyone feels about this place.” Mike grinned as he opened his container of milk. “Who’s your roommate?”

Turning his head to sweep his eyes around the hall, Eddie caught sight of Richie easily. Sitting at the table parallel to theirs in the other far corner of the room, he gestured emphatically as he chatted with two friends. Both of them were slim and pale, one had straight auburn hair that needed a cut, the other a curly honey-colored mop. “Him,” he said, pointing. “Richie.”

“ _Richie Tozier_   is your roommate?” Mike let out a low whistle. “Good luck.”

Eddie didn’t like the sound of that, at all. “You know him?”

“We don’t  _know_   him, but everyone here kind of  _knows_   him. Y’know?” Ben sliced up his salsbury steak. “Infamous is what you’d call it.”

“Yeah,” Mike agreed, nodding slowly. “He’s really loud; pulls pranks; bangs a lot of erasers.”

“This is the fifth prep school he’s been at,” Ben interjected.

“ _Fifth_?” Eddie couldn’t fathom it. “Why?”

“Got kicked out of four,” Ben said through a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

Eddie glanced back across the room at his roommate at exactly the wrong time. Richie was already looking his way, and blew him a kiss. He jerked his neck forward and let his eyes settle on Mike’s kind face. “Why did they kick him out?”

“He’s really loud,” he grinned, repeating himself. “Pulls pranks; bangs a lot of erasers.”

“He’s okay, though,” Ben reasoned, leaning forward to look across the room. “I know his friend Stan a little bit. He’s not the kind of guy to put up with bullshit and he’s been friends with Richie since he first got here.”

That assessment didn’t comfort Eddie in the slightest. He didn’t want to be stuck in an twelve-foot cell with a silly, loud mess of a person who would deign to blow him kisses as a goof and be so forward as to call him darling before they even exchanged names. "Fuck, I want to go home," he whispered under his breath. Never in a million years did he ever think he'd be homesick, but there it was. 

"You're going to be fine. Trust me, I've been doing this for years," Mike offered brightly. "Some terms you get a bad roommate." He reached out and patted Eddie's hand. "Sit with us tomorrow at breakfast. You can vent to us about all the dumb shit Richie says to you tonight."

Smiling genuinely for the first time since his mother'd uttered the words _boarding school_   to him six weeks prior, Eddie loosened his tie. "Okay, cool."

 

***

 

Eddie sat on his bed, reading a book. The first thing he'd done when he got to the room was kick Richie's sneakers as hard as he could so they landed under the idiot's bed, far back against the wall. It made him feel a little bit better.

In the hour that'd passed since supper period ended he'd unpacked his clothes, stuffed his pills and spare inhalers into the top drawer of his dresser, changed into pajamas, and dedicated a spirited fifteen minutes to scratching at the back of his knees. Richie'd yet to make an appearance. The clock on the wall told him that curfew approached. It was something the Headmaster had stressed over during his welcome speech: the strict nine PM curfew. There would be bed-checks and  _lights out_   every evening at nine on the dot. Eddie pictured a lot of lying still in the dark and staring up at the ceiling in his future. He didn't usually get tired until pretty late at night.

The door opened suddenly,  _fast,_ bashing into the wall and bouncing off the rubber doorstop with a metallic  _boing_.

"Hey there, hi there, ho there," Richie sang, strutting into the room with his jacket and dress shirt slung over his shoulder. His white undershirt was as wrinkled as the rest of his clothes. He bowed as he slammed the door closed. "How was dinner? You gonna ralph, or what?" He tossed the remnants of his uniform across the room at his desk chair and wrapped his hands around his own throat, like he was choking to death. "Barfs-ville, am-i-rite?"

"Do your glasses work, or are they just for decoration?" Eddie held up his book. "I'm reading. You're really loud."

"Excuuuuuuse me." Richie grinned and flung himself down onto his bed, kicking off his shoes and letting them clunk onto the floor. "So uptight. Little young to be so uptight, no?"

"I'm not uptight, just because you're the goofiest person alive." Closing his book, Eddie sat up straighter, meeting Richie's magnified eyes. "Anyone normal would be uptight compared to you."

" _Normal_ , that's such an elitist word. Like who the fuck decides that?"

"Normal people. Normal people decide what's normal."

" _Boring_  people, you mean." Out of nowhere, Richie coughed harshly into his cupped hands, earning himself a dirty look from Eddie. “What? I’m not allowed to cough, either?”

Hiking himself back further on his bed to lean against the wall, Eddie shook his head fast. “I have to live in here with you and you’re spraying germs all over the room.”

“ _Spraying_ ,” Richie scoffed, shaking his head equally quickly,  _mockingly_.  “I’m not sick or anything; it’s from smoking cigarettes.”

“Every single human being on Earth has germs in their mouth all the time," Eddie intoned painstakingly slowly, patronizing. "They’re all over your hands now, and probably your bed.”

Richie rolled his eyes, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Yowza; you’re a fuckin’ bucket of chucks, aren’t ya?”

“I have no clue what anything in that sentence even meant.”

“You’re a screamer a minute,” he deadpanned, checking each phrase off on his fingers. “A fuckin’ riot. A barrel-o-laughs. A friggin’ carnival—”

“Think I got it,” Eddie stated, icy as a popsicle.

He coughed again, and Eddie could tell he put effort into it, purposely making it extra loud and phlegmy.

“You’re disgusting.”

“Yeah? Well, you’re not the peach I thought you were either, sweetheart.” Richie opened his suitcase roughly and started unpacking his clothes. “We all have our crosses to bear.” He looked up at the clock. "I shouldn't even warn you since you're such a little dickhead, but this is your last chance to go to the bathroom if you want to piss or jerk off or brush your teeth before the fucking warden comes by to lock us in."

"Lock?" Eddie was aware that he sounded like he was terrified but he didn't care. "They aren't really going to--"

"No dumb-dumb, it's a figure of speech. Ha-ha-ha, prison, ha. Get it?" Richie waved a hand over his shoulder towards Eddie without looking at him. "I recommend you go. It's a long fucking night."

Standing up, Eddie hovered behind Richie for a minute, taking in the other boys height. Even leaning over his bed, it was obvious he was taller than average. "Okay. Uh, thanks."

"No problemo, sunshine."

***

 

After Eddie brushed his teeth and relieved himself, he returned to the room just in time for checks. With the lights out, it was painfully dark in their room. The only illumination came from the crack underneath the door. Their small window provided the barest sliver of moonlight only, as the light from the campus lamp posts didn’t reach them up on the third floor.

In the silence Eddie was left with nothing but his thoughts. All at once, he missed everything: his mother, his bed, the ability to turn on a light and read when he couldn’t sleep, the smell of his blanket. He even missed his boring home town. His eyes betrayed him and he wept as quietly as he could manage. The little sobs came out of him as clicks and tiny gasps.

“It’s always rough the first night.” Richie’s voice cut across the darkness, as soft and gentle as it was in the chapel when he put his hand on Eddie's shoulder.

Sniffling, Eddie rubbed his balled fists into his leaking eyes. “It doesn’t seem so hard for  _you_.”

Richie exhaled heavily, his lips vibrating from the force of it. “This ain’t my first rodeo.”  

“How long have you been here?”

“ _Here_ -here? A year.” He yawned openly, talking through it, “Lookit that: fuckin’ poet and I didn’t know it.”

Eddie chuckled, shaking his head. _He's kind of funny. Sometimes._   “How long have you—”

“Been in boarding school? Six long ones.”

“ _Six years?_   How old were you when you first—”

“Ten. And I cried like a fuckin' little diaper-baby every night for the first three weeks, so don’t feel like you’re a dork or like I’m judging you or anything.”

“Yeah, but you were just a kid. I’m fucking seventeen.”

“ _Seventeen?_   Then why are you in a junior room?”

“I was si—” Eddie faltered, not really keen on going into his whole life story after knowing Richie barely four hours. “I got held back in kindergarten.”

A grin took over Richie’s voice. “What kind of little dummy has to repeat kindergarten? You fail finger painting?”

“You’re such an  _asshole!”_   Eddie’s anger came immediately, washing over his entire body and sending that nagging desire to weep sailing out to sea a mile from land. He turned over roughly, the stiff dorm blanket snapping as he faced the wall. “Don’t say another fucking word to me tonight.”

Richie was quiet for a couple minutes. He whispered: “Sorry,” barely audible.

“ _I said:_   shut the fuck up.”

Eddie didn’t cry anymore that night, but he didn't get any rest either. He listened to Richie sleep—another thing he did loudly—and thought horrible, reprehensible things. He cursed his mother, his stepfather, the school, the Headmaster's stupid bald head, the day he was born, and most of all, he cursed Richie fucking Tozier.


	2. Guilty until proven innocent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie's first day of classes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a warning: this story has thoughts and feelings about sexuality, urges, orientation and repression/confusion about being bi

“ _UP,_   TOZIER!” The voice screeched from the doorway. “Don’t make me come back around again.”

“ Mm’up,” Richie slurred, rising from his pillow like a vampire out of a coffin. If someone asked him to make a list of the things he’d missed during his summer away from St. Stan’s, being startled awake by asshole prefect seniors would be dead last.

He tossed his blanket off and groped for his glasses. The bed across the room had already been vacated and made up; wrinkle-free with hospital corners.

Eddie Kaspbrak. When Richie’d read the unfamiliar name on his room assignment sheet in August, he was giddy as hell about it. Eddie’s arrival should’ve been exciting—a new person to talk to for once—but instead it left Richie feeling judged and sort of deflated. Why did the kid have to be such a little dickhead? Why couldn't he just be cool and appreciate the fact that he lucked out with a funny roommate like Richie?

_Because he’s another boring zombie. Besides Billy and Stanley, they’re all the same. Pod people, man._

Up at the crack of dawn and raring to go, of course he’d be that type. Eager to stick to the rules, just like any uptight kid would be. Richie wanted to march to the lavatory (where Eddie was undoubtedly standing in line waiting for his turn to shower), grab the asshole by the shoulders and shake him.

_Y'know, your life only has to suck as much as you want it to. Don't you like to have fun? We could sneak out some night, steal beers from the gas station and go to the dollar movie theater. Climb up the fire escape and sit in front of the billboard and chuck ice cubes at people._

Sighing to himself, Richie shoved that silly fantasy out of his mind. He hauled himself up out of bed and swung the door closed, letting it slam, and fully expected the same dumbass that woke him up to come back bitching about the ruckus. He changed his underwear and dragged his wrinkled uniform back onto his body. The smartest move—which Eddie would have known if he’d asked—was to wait until way after dinner to shower. Without fail, there were no lines for the bathroom at eight thirty PM.

While there were some advantages to a mundane existence, there were also pitfalls. Richie’s life at St. Stan’s was so predictable that every breath of stale air threatened to make each part of his body break out in an involuntary fidget fit. Since he was little he’d been that kid bouncing off the walls, the one parents whispered about at birthday parties:  _“Maybe he’s had enough cake.”_   Sugar or no sugar, moving around just suited him, so it was only fitting that he’d moved from school to school for a few years. And okay, fine, he was  _expelled_ from those schools, big deal. A bunch of humorless, boring people ran the private school franchises in New England, for sure.

Richie had this lingering hope that someday, among the pod people, he'd meet someone that would surprise him. But Eddie’d come along and proven himself to be exactly like all the rest of them in a matter of hours. Living with him for an entire term would be a miserable, constrictive four months.

_You’re too loud, Richie. No coughing, Richie. Shut the fuck up, Richie._

Before he left for breakfast, he hocked a big loogie and spat it right into the heel of Eddie Kaspbrak’s shiny brown shoe.

_A gift from me to you, sunshine._

 

***

 

“Normally, laughing would be the right response to anything I say, but right now—" Richie smacked his palm flat against the table. His frustration had hit its peak, and his friends were not quite  _getting_ the severity of his problem. “This isn’t funny, okay?” If necessary, he was willing to spoon feed it to them the same way his mother used to get him to eat applesauce. “Open up the hanger for the airplane, Stanley. Listen to the words coming out of my mouth: I’m not even allowed to  _cough_   in my own room anymore. Can you not see how BONKERS that is?”

“Richie, I’m listening to you. It’s impossible to  _not_   listen to you.” Stan stuck his knuckles by his ears, plugging them to make a point. “You’re louder than a freight train.”

Richie jerked himself back in his chair, slumping against the wood slats. “If you’re listening then act like you give a shit about my pain.” He leered across the crowded hall at Eddie—neat and tidy and  _smiling_ —yucking it up with two nerds whose faces Richie recognized from sophomore Economics class.

_This kid is having the time of his life with those dweebs and he can’t even pull the stick out of his ass for a second to have a couple chucks with me._

“So y-you hate your new ruh-roommate,” Bill replied evenly, addressing his cereal. ‘’G-go to the Administration and see if any-wuh-one wants to sw-switch with you.”

“Yeah, it’s just that simple, right Billy?” Even though Bill was the most sensible, and his suggestion the only practical, obvious solution, it simply wouldn’t work. Those fuckheads in the main office were a bigger pain in Richie’s ass than Eddie. "Have we forgotten that the  _Administration_ and all of its little workers are basically the  _we-hate-Richie-Tozier_   fan club?”

Stan smirked as he peeled his orange. “If they hate you, why would they be a  _fan club?”_

 _“Fuckin’ Stanley,”_ Richie groaned up at the ceiling, and then something dawned on him. “Hold on. Yeah. Fuckin’ Stanley.” He brought his face down and took his glasses off, attempting to throw both of them the most beseeching expression he could force his eyes to make. “One of you guys should switch with me.”

Stan and Bill side-eyed one another. “Bill and I like being roommates.”

“Yeah we have cuh-c-common interests. Plus we’re in b-b-baseball tuh-together.”

Returning the frames to his face, Richie snickered. “Common interests like tugging on each other’s wangs?”

Stan’s hazel eyes flashed a warning, though his voice remained friendly enough. “Richie, I’m telling you this  _one more time_.  Keep your voice down about that. Okay?”

“Forgot,” he mumbled quickly. “Sorry.”

Since the last quarter of the previous school year Richie’d been aware that his best friends spent most of their private time sucking on each other’s faces. It didn’t come as a huge surprise to him. There was an edge in the glances they shared that Richie both feared and envied—if anyone looked at  _him_   that way he’d probably run away or cream his pants.

His solution to dealing with his own feelings about it was to crack jokes, and sometimes he honestly just forgot that they didn’t want that shit  _advertised_. Branding yourself queer in an all-boys school with communal showers just wasn’t the smartest action plan, and Stan didn’t need that kind of attention on himself. He was already a lonely Jew enrolled in a Catholic school.

Stan just shrugged the apology off, changing the subject. “What does asthma kid look like anyway? We couldn’t see him from the back row.”

“Check him out yourself.” Richie held his skinny arm up and pointed unabashedly. “He’s in the corner over there. Friggin’  _Bambi_   eyes and chipmunk cheeks.”

Bill didn’t bother to look.  “Sounds cue-cute.”

“He’s too much of an uptight dickhead to be cute.” Richie stared daggers at the little menace, sitting there eating fruit salad when there were perfectly good frosted flakes up for grabs. A goody-goody in the purest sense, and in the most aggravating way. Like he thought he was  _better_   than sugar cereal. “I swear though, he looks like someone  _drew_   him. You guys ever see  _Oliver and Company_?” 

“He looks like he was  _drawn_   by someone,” Stan corrected, following Richie’s gaze across the dining hall. He furrowed his eyebrows. “Who was he in  _Oliver and Company_?”

“Are you kidding me?” Richie couldn’t suppress the urge to roll his eyes and smack himself in the forehead. Stanley was so dense; it should’ve been obvious. “The little kitty. Oliver.”

“The cute little orphan cat who needs help figuring out how to survive?” Stan had a mile-wide smile plastered on his smug face, and Richie already knew where he was going with that train of thought. “Instead of hating him, why don’t you try to help him?”

“I did!" Richie insisted. "I really tried to help him last night.” Listening to the kid cry in the dark had torn his heart up in a way he wouldn’t admit. So pathetic and lost and  _shy_   about it. It was obvious he hadn’t wanted Richie to hear him. But then the little fucker went and changed from soft to spiny in an instant, blowing away any sympathy Richie felt for him. “It ended with him telling me to ‘shut the fuck up.’”

“Kid sounds smart,” Stan hummed, focusing on methodically removing every trace of white rind from the segments of his fruit. “Is he here on a scholarship?”

“Har-dee-har-har,” Richie deadpanned. He stuffed a handful of dry cereal into his mouth, still watching Eddie, who hadn’t turned a single glance in his direction since breakfast began. “I wanna know what he’s saying  _so_  bad,” he muttered with his cheeks packed full of sweet flakes.

“What do you cuh-care?” Bill grinned and tipped forward in his chair to join Richie’s gaping. “Do you h-hate him, or are you obs-s-sessed with him?”

“ _Obsessed_.”  Richie scoffed with his mouth full and held his sides like Bill had gotten off a good one, but a mildly distressed stab in his gut gurgled its agreement with his friend’s assessment. Swallowing, he changed his voice to a Southern gentleman and immediately teetered back to balanced. “I do declare my hatred towards our young Edward is simply retaliation, ah say REACTIONARY, ya’ hear. The boy thinks his shit do not stink, but the foot he puts forward is RIPE children.”

Clearing his throat, Bill placed his spoon neatly on his tray. His blue eyes searched on Richie’s face, the slightest tinge of disappointment flickering in them. “It’s huh-hard coming to a n-new sc-school. You should know th-th-that b-better than anyone. S-s-so he was a d-d-dick on his f-f-first day. Y-you don’t even nuh-KNOW him.”

 The smile Stan turned towards Bill and his radiating wisdom made Richie want to shiver. “Billy’s right. Was he a dick to you this morning?”

Richie shook his head slowly as he let his stuttering friend’s words seep into him. “He booked it for the showers as soon as the bells rang.”

He knew that all of it had to be rough on the kid. Night-time lock down, missing home, a school full of strangers, and the kicker: stalled toilets and public nakedness. Richie hadn’t even thought to ask him where he came from. If the answer was public school, well, he must’ve felt as desperate as a fish flopping around on a dock.

“ _Fine_   okay?” The exclamation burst out of Richie with force. “I’ll be a fucking angel to him,” he grumbled, setting his stare back across the room, just in time to catch Eddie watching him. That little orphan kitty rolled his eyes and put his elbow on the table, using his spread palm to block his face from Richie’s view. The dickhead.

_I’ll be nice to you, roomie, but if you keep on being a sour little shit, it’s curtains._

***

 

Richie stood in the front of the classroom and leaned his butt against the chalk railing of the blackboard. His back pressed against the hanging map and his fingers drummed an absent beat against the tops of his thighs. Sixteen boys in identical outfits were waiting all around him, listening for their names. 

On the first day of class—in  _every_   class of all the private schools he’d attended since fifth grade—he’d been assigned to a seat in the last row of desks, by the window. _T for Tozier._   Alphabetically-ordered assigned seats; universal. Every. Single. Teacher.

His eleventh grade Pre-Calculus teacher Mr. Reilly, AKA Smiley Reilly—named so because it rhymed, sure, but also because the man probably hadn’t curved up one of the corners of his mouth since 1976—was no exception to the rule, and called role as he directed them to sit. Predictable. Painful.  

The morning had one surprise in the form of Eddie, whose assigned seat was smack dab in the middle of the room. _K for Kaspbrak._   His eager lashes fluttered around and his short fingers folded and unfolded on the wood flat-top of his desk. Kid was smart enough for Pre-Calc. Richie thought he’d be going it alone in the class because Billy and Stanley were in Trig with the less-advanced juniors.

When all the boys were seated, Smiley Reilly began his lesson. His first order of business was to remove the map blocking the board. He pulled on the ring at the bottom of it and tugged. The release clicked, and he slowly let the laminant disappear up into the roller at the top. Every boy in the class burst into nervous giggles that caught in their throats. The teacher stepped back, blinking, his face twisted up like he’d just smelled a fart.

Behind the map, someone’d drawn a chalk portrait of Smiley Reilly himself. The cherry on top was that it was a  _labeled_   portrait, with his nickname on full display. All of his less-desirable features were magnified: his balding hairline, the bags under his eyes, his painfully chapped lips, and the mole on his cheek was comically enhanced to be damn near the size of Rhode Island.

Blustering, Reilly jerked his arm to point in Richie's direction. There wasn't even a second of hesitation. “ _Out,_   Tozier. Go to the office.”

The grin on Richie’s face melted down into a frown. “What?"  He sat up straighter in his chair and threw up his hands. "But Mr. Reilly, I didn’t—”

“Tell it to Mr. Carter.” The teacher turned around so fast the short hair on the back of his head flopped. "Take your things with you.” He scrubbed the eraser over the drawing. “You’re not coming back here.” 

Richie stood and kept his shoulders hunched as the class’ collective stare roved all over his face. He gathered up his books and strode up to the front of the room. “I’m being arrested right now, on suspicion. Zero evidence,” he implored, his eyes zeroing in on Eddie, who sat there with his hands still folded and his eyebrows crimped together. “This is total bullshit, and you know it.”

“A bit dramatic, aren't we?" Reilly pointed at the open classroom door. “You're wasting their time, Tozier.”

 

By the time he finished the short walk down the hallway, the anger that pulsed low in Richie’s abdomen had spread out to the tips of his fingers and his toes. Falsely accused. Story of his life.

_You do **one**  thing wrong. Or ten things or twenty things wrong,  **whateve** r **,**  and they’re gonna think you’re to blame for every little prank._

He entered the disciplinary office without giving the assistant chancellor eye contact and just stood there, waiting for the shit-storm to hit him in the face. Carter had been tired of Richie since his second day at St. Stan’s, the day he stole every scrap of chalk from all the classrooms and disposed of the sticks in the lake. It was hilarious, and sent all the teachers into a panic. Absolute mayhem. Beautiful chaos that burned as bright as a Christmas tree. Richie got a week of solitary meals for that one.

Mr. Carter surprised Richie by grinning at his arrival. “Wow, impressive.” He made a show out of looking at his watch, shaking his hand to let his sleeve flap back. “New record. Less than ten minutes into first period.”

Tossing his books down onto the visitor chair so hard they almost bounced off, Richie let out a pathetic grunt. “I swear to God, I didn’t do anything this time.”

“Alright, let’s relax and start at the beginning.” Carter motioned a hand towards the other chair. “Have a seat.”

Richie blinked at Carter for a healthy fifteen seconds before he sat, utterly confused. “Sooo, is this like  _Freaky Friday_  or something? Is it really you in there?” He’d expected an immediate and severe lecture, but the dude seemed as cool as a cucumber.

“Things are going to be a little different, Mr. Tozier. I’ve been formally invited to go easy on you this year.” Carter got up from his chair and shut the door to his office. He was a small, round, nervous little man who hardly ever cracked a smile and chirped out his words as rapidly as an announcer at a race track. Everything about him was different that morning. He seemed calm, and spoke at a snail’s pace as he moved back behind the desk. “You know that you’ve been a pain in my ass since you got here, and you’re probably the worst-behaved boy I’ve ever met, but—”

“Is that how you  _go easy_ on someone?” Richie chuckled under his breath. “My definition of easy and your definition of easy are really different.”

“Richie, shut up and listen to me. You’re a disciplinary nightmare, but your grades…” Carter trailed off, the struggle for his brain to find the right words rippling his ruddy cheeks. “You have an impeccable academic record. Kids who make marks like yours need to stay enrolled at this school.”

Richie nodded down at his shoes and adjusted his glasses. “Does that mean I can do whatever I want from now on? Because—”

“ _No,”_ he barked, before running a jittery hand through his salt and pepper hair. “It means I’m going to start giving you the benefit of the doubt before I lose my temper. Tell me what just happened, in your own words.”

“Mr. Reilly told me to get out of his class.”

“Why?”

“There was a picture of him up on the board, making fun of him.” Richie slapped a hand over his heart, as sincere as he was capable of being. “I can’t draw worth shit, okay? It wasn’t me.”

Carter licked his lips, his brow crumbling and creasing in the center. “Did you tell him you didn’t do it?”

“He didn’t even ask me if I did it or not,” Richie mumbled, and he knew he sounded as defeated as he felt. Branded a troublemaker, no matter what. No hope for anything else, so why bother being good. “He just told me to leave.”

“Alright.” Carter bobbed his head and stood. “Get your stuff; I’ll have a talk with him.”

They were silent as they walked to the classroom together, their footfalls echoing against the painted brick walls of the hallway. Carter poked his head through Reilly’s open classroom door. “Good morning, class.”

The boys hummed an unenthusiastic “Good Morning Mister Car-ter,”  in response.

He stepped back and patted Richie on the shoulder. “Take your seat, Mr. Tozier.”

Reilly stared slack-jawed, and an additional sixteen pairs of eyes followed Richie as he crossed the front of the room and resumed his place by the window.

“Mr. Reilly, a word?” Carter waved a come-on gesture at the teacher, and the two of them disappeared into the hall.

Hushed conversations broke out around the room. Richie let his eyes trail over to Eddie, who was already looking his way. The expression on the other boy’s face was a mystery—drawn and tight—but Richie kept looking at him, playing chicken until Eddie turned away.

A few minutes later, Reilly returned with his tail between his legs. He sent one long, dark glare Richie’s way before resuming the lesson.

Witnessing his teacher's defeat should've seen Richie walking on sunshine. An uncontrollable, self-satisfied smile should have stretched out his lips, but he just came up empty. Asshole teachers like Reilly were always going to expect the worst from him. Kids like Eddie were always going to tell him to shut the fuck up. Fake-out, I-swear-buddy-we’re-friends phonies like Carter were only going to give him the time of day when they  _needed_   something from him. The school-year had barely begun, and Richie couldn't wait for it to be over.

***

 

The rest of Richie’s day chugged by and went smoother than his morning. It was packed full of the typical predictable bullshit he expected, yet rolled in a light dusting of less-than-predictable discoveries. He got assigned to the same seat in every class, he ate all his meals with Bill and Stan, and at least four of his teachers looked at him like he was a swarm of locusts entering their classroom. The unforeseen stuff proved to be more interesting. Eddie was in  _all_   of Richie’s classes, even the advanced ones like Physics. They didn’t speak a word to one another all day, but they shared enough looks that Richie started  _noticing_   things.

Eddie’s upper lip resembled two pink teardrops kissing each other. His brown hair had a reddish-blondish shimmer to it, especially in the late afternoon light. When their History teacher asked him to read aloud, he squeaked a bit at the start but when he warmed up his pronunciations were undeniably Maine. The accent was unmistakable to Richie. As soon as he spit out the last word of the passage, his hands dug into the pocket of his pants and he ripped a blast from his inhaler. His embarrassed flush made Richie’s heart lurch; a cold stab just like the one he felt when he heard the kid cry.

After supper period, Richie stayed in Bill and Stanley’s room and read comics until the last possible second. The need to shower before lockdown was the only reason he left them, and he closed the door on their lecture, the same one they’d given him at every meal.

_“Hey, remember: be nice, Richie. You know what it’s like to be new—”_

 

Richie entered his room as quietly as possible. He let the door close with a soft click and his eyes fell on Eddie, who sat at his desk facing the wall. Head bent over a text and scribbling furiously into a notebook, he didn't seem to notice Richie's arrival. Stepping as lightly as he could, Richie crept to his dresser. He tried to slide the drawer open silently, but failed. The old wooden tracks squealed and the hinges rattled with a metallic clacking.

“Oh!” Eddie whipped his head around. “Jesus, you scared me.” He turned jerkily back to his assignment. “I figured I’d hear you coming from a mile away.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you don’t know me, okay?” Richie shook his head as he yanked pajamas and underwear out of the drawer. He’d come in prepared to be nice and quiet and agreeable, but if the kid wanted to jam him into a box like everyone else, fuck‘m. “Every fucking person around here  _thinks_   they know me but—"

Voice barely above a whisper, Eddie cut him off. “What that teacher did to you this morning wasn’t fair.”

"No shit." Sighing hard, Richie slung the bedclothes over his shoulder and faced his roommate. “Sucks to be me, right?”

“Well I can’t help but think that maybe you’ve been bad so many times that teachers just  _expect_ …” He scrunched up his nose and kept his eyes on the floor. “He still shouldn’t have blamed you without proof.”

_You're actually taking my side, kid?_

Richie tossed his pajamas on the bed and removed his jacket. Eddie’s momentary flash of coolness set the ball rolling forward on plan:  _Be Nice_.  “Hey, uh, did anyone tell you what to do with your laundry?”

“No.” Eddie’s head snapped up and cocked. “What do I do with it?”

“On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays? You take whatever dirty stuff you have to the basement in a bag and give it to whichever kids are sentenced to laundry duty.”

“Okay,” Eddie drawled. His teardrop lips puckered into a confused pout. “That sounds like it’s kind of common sense though, right?”

“Fine, forget it.” Richie scowled. Damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. “It might seem stupid, but I’m just telling you in case you weren’t sure what to do with it.”

“No-no. I wasn’t trying to be a smart ass, I—"

Richie waved a hand to silence him. “Make sure you write your name in your uniform before you bring it down there. They wash all the wool stuff separate because it can’t be dried, and if your name isn’t in your pants… you’re gonna end up wearing someone else’s pants.”

“Thanks for the tip." Eddie smirked and rolled his eyes. "Wool is so itchy. You’d think they’d update them to something dryer-safe.”

“They like us to be uncomfortable, kid.” Richie relaxed a bit, plopping down onto his bed to remove his shoes. “Plus they want laundry duty to be a punishment.” He took his glasses off to pull his teeshirt over his head. After he tossed it on the floor, he felt Eddie watching him. “Whatcha looking at?” He squinted across the room as Eddie turned sharply in his chair to face the wall.

“Nothing.” Eddie rattled off the words in a rush. “You just look different without your glasses on.”

“Different how?” He placed the fames back over his face and got the rest of his stuff together as he waited for Eddie’s answer.

“Richie, I have a lot of work to do, and you’re--”

“Yeah, never mind. I’m gonna shower before bed. It’s not Grand Central Station in there at night, another helpful tip for you. I’m full of good ones, if you’re nice.”

“Thanks.” Eddie didn’t turn around. He picked up his pen and continued working.

 

***

 

The lavatory was blissfully empty that evening, and Richie turned the water up as hot as it could get. If anyone asked him, he'd have told them that he chose to shower at night because the bathroom was less crowded, but the secret real reason was because there were fewer people. Those reasons might appear redundant, but they were two entirely different things—at least to Richie they were. Less crowded implied shorter wait times. Fewer people meant exactly that: a reduced amount of bodies occupying the room.

Richie had a bad habit of staring at other boys in the shower, and he’d been called out for it at other schools because his squinting made it so obvious. He wasn’t even sure why he did it, because 1) he really liked girls, so he couldn't be gay and 2) he could barely see anything without his glasses, anyway. And it wasn’t even like he was trying to ogle their dicks or anything. He stared at chests. The dimples that some boys had on their lower back. The pulsing of triceps as a face got washed. He’d stare until he couldn’t stand it and then face the wall to hide the fact that he liked looking.

Instead of trying to stop, or buckling down and dealing with the  _why_   surrounding the impulse, his solution was to squash the temptation. He showered as close to curfew as possible, when maybe one or two of the quieter, shier boys were the only ones to join him. The nervous, fluttery sort of boys who rarely made eye contact with anyone.

Just based on first impressions, Richie thought his new roommate would’ve fallen into that shy-boy category, but in a day and a half—and with few actual words shared between them—Eddie’d revealed that he was made up of a strange jumble of weakness and strength. 

Eddie had barreled into the shower room during rush hour and gotten out alive. He was mouthy as hell when he wanted to be, but the kid couldn’t breathe when made into the center of attention. There was a certain frightened energy about him while they were in the classroom. It pinched up his face and kept him quiet, but he'd already made friends and sat with them at every meal. That evening when he’d taken Richie’s side in the great  _Smiley Reilly vs Tozier_   battle royale, he'd shown that he could look past personal differences when dealing with injustice. Or maybe he was just softening on Richie.

As he gave himself a final rinse, Richie realized he’d been thinking about Eddie for almost half of his shower, and the joking words Bill used at breakfast came back to him.

_Obsessed. Maybe Billy. Or maybe he's just interesting and I wish he'd be nicer to me. Ever think of that? And anyway it seems like he’s starting to be nicer. So there._

When Richie came back from the bathroom, Eddie was already in bed. He’d fallen asleep with the lights on and a paperback book spread out over his chest. It was the closest look Richie’d gotten at him: dark lashes fanned over the tops of freckled cheeks; teardrop lips slightly parted. A combination of angelic and impish that made Richie smile while Bill’s words haunted him for the second time. _"Sounds cue-cute."_

_Fuck you, Billy._

Richie gently removed the book and placed it on the desk with the pages spread to keep Eddie’s place. He shut the lights and shucked his glasses, sprawling out on his stomach in bed. They still had five minutes to go until lights out, but the hot water that’d spilled over his head had left him sleepy and he knew he couldn’t last. 

"Night, Eds," he whispered into his pillow.  


	3. So he's a regular old...insert famous baseball player's name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie needs something to do besides study.

Eddie sat on the hard bench, watching through the chain-link fence as the team ran through infield passes. He fought the urge to fold his hands neatly in his lap. Instead, he left them splayed at his sides as casually as he could manage. There were other boys hovering around the make-shift dugout, dressed up in gym clothes and borrowed cleats. Like much of the student body, they appeared too studious to be typical jocks or bullies, though each and every one of them were bigger, and probably stronger than Eddie. That didn’t worry him. His strength had always been in his speed and evasiveness.

Whether it was running and hiding from the bully boys in his neighborhood, or rounding the bases and sneaking past the tag during his short little league career, or (in more recent years) hurrying past his mother and up the stairs to the safety of his bedroom—he could be as quick as lightening when he really wanted to. He was eager to have the chance to show everyone what he was made of: sturdier stuff than they probably thought just by looking at him.

The baseball coach stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes perusing the group of prospective boys. He was Eddie’s English teacher, Mr. Ryan— _coach_   Ryan, too, he supposed. Just a few hours earlier, Eddie’d watched him smile with teeth showing as he sentenced Richie to detention for mouthing off during class. It seemed like all the staff at St. Stan’s pulled double duty, whether they wanted to or not.

Coach Ryan huffed a tired sigh before he spoke, his enthusiasm matching that of a funeral director. “Some of you are new; some of you tried out last year and didn’t make it.” He spat on the ground and grimaced.  “We have five spots open. You boys will get out there and rotate positions. Show us what you can do.” Gesturing behind himself, he indicated the  _us_ he’d declared: the captain and co-captain, standing beside home plate. They were two boys that Eddie recognized not only as classmates, but as his roommate’s best friends Stan and Bill.

Stan, the slimmer one, leaned in close to the tall redhead, whispering something without taking his eyes off of Eddie’s face. Bill just nodded his response. Neither of them smiled or laughed, but the brief secret conference sent a familiar uneasiness squirming through Eddie’s gut. Boys speculating about him, probably calling names. The mildly confident shell he’d walked in with began melting away.

They could always just  _tell_ ,  and he didn’t know how, because he tried his very best not to make it obvious. It started with the names they hurled at him on the playground in elementary school:  _Mary, girly boy, fruitcake—_ they were just words. Words that little boys heard from their fathers and repeated without really knowing what they meant, but Eddie knew that they were right, and there was nothing he could do to change it.

He liked boys, not girls. He’d known it since he was six years old, but he had no plans to do anything about it. It was ultimately the reason that he’d begged his mother to let him play little league baseball in the first place. He couldn’t keep the alpha sort of boys from picking on him for being different, and he wasn’t big enough to fight them, so he made the decision to join them instead. And for a time, it worked—not only was he fast, but he could catch and throw, too. Boys that previously singled him out ended up respecting him. After three seasons, he took a shoulder check to the face from a base runner, giving his mother the perfect opportunity to put a stop to it. He was simply  _“too delicate to play such a dangerous sport’,”_  she’d insisted, while she hummed and tutted and fussed over his black eye. Visibly pleased; enjoying it.

But Eddie wasn’t twelve anymore, and for the first time in his life, Sonia Kaspbrak lived miles and miles away from him. She’d told him that he had growing up to do, that being at St. Stan’s was like a try-out for college. At first, what with the rules and regulations and uniforms and schedules--it seemed like he’d simply traded one constrictive environment for another. He kept forgetting that he had options. The things that held him down when he was back in Derry—namely Sonia’s gigantic emotions—weren’t there with him. He could go out for baseball if he wanted to, and he  _wanted_   _to_ very much, the second he saw the try-out sheet on the bulletin board. Hell, he more than wanted to. He fucking  _needed_   to.

It only took three days as a boarding school student for Eddie to come to a stirring realization: if he didn’t get himself involved in an activity, he was either going to lose his mind from boredom  _or_   murder someone, and that someone would probably be his roommate.

Things with Richie had been okay—civil, to be fair—but even when the bespectacled boy made an obvious effort to be quiet and nice, he didn’t quite hit the mark. There were random accents and unwanted nicknames, interrupted study time, not to mention the loudest sleeping Eddie’d ever witnessed. He wagered that becoming a part of something larger—something that not only got him away from that dorm room, but left him tired enough to knock out early—would benefit them both.

Stan’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Hey, you’re Eddie, right?” He and Bill both stared through the chain-link, sizing him up.

_Are they really calling on me first out of everyone here?_

A couple of other boys’ heads turned toward him. They were as surprised as he was. “Uh, yeah. That’s me.” He blinked fast, and his fingers folded themselves over his knees against his will.

Stan waved his hand to beckon Eddie over to them as Bill pointed at a box of baseball gloves near the base of the cyclone fence. “Gr-grab a muh-mitt.”

Eddie stood up and pulled out a ratty glove. He stuffed his hand into it and flexed to get a feel for it as he moved around the fence to join them. “Why’d you pick me first?”

“Based on what we’ve heard, you seem tough.” Stan smirked at the shocked look that crossed Eddie’s face. “What positions can you play?”

“I’m used to right field, but I can also sub at second.”

“P-perfect, get on seh-seh-second.” Bill jogged over to his spot on the mound. “FIND SOMEONE FOR SH-SHORT,” he shouted back towards Stan, his stutter almost vanishing when he raised his voice.

“I play short,” Stan whispered to Eddie. He grinned as he yelled out to the captain. “YOU’RE TRYING TO REPLACE ME?”

“SUBS, ST-STANLEY. WE NEED SUBS.” Bill shook his head and turned away from them. He pointed at the second base defender, sending him out to make room for Eddie.

Stan double tapped Eddie on the shoulder. “Are you ready to get out there?”

“Yeah.” Eddie ran his eyes over the rest of the team, spread out into their positions on the field. “Richie doesn’t play baseball with you guys, right?”

A sharp bark of laughter doubled Stan over for a second. “You’re hilarious. No. Richie isn’t a  _joiner_.” He glanced over at Bill, who gave him a double-handed, open-mouthed ‘what gives’ shrug. “Get out there. We’re not a very good team, so don’t be nervous.”

“I’m not,” Eddie insisted before running out to defend his base. He  _was_   nervous, at least a little, but not too much.  _“Based on what we’ve heard, you seem tough.”_  Tough or not, that assessment made him hold his head a little bit higher as he pounded his hand into the borrowed glove. 

 

***

 

Though he’d been rusty at the start, the overall showing Eddie gave them was impressive, he didn’t need anyone to confirm it. He’d caught two pop-fly balls, got onto first with a bunt, and stolen third on a slide. Stan told all the boys to check the bulletin board in the dining hall by lunch the following day, and Eddie was optimistic.

Grimy and sore, he planned to hit the showers and change clothes before the bells rang out for supper period, and he took a shortcut back to his dorm. His heart rate continued to pump fast, the adrenaline providing him an extended head rush, but his limbs were left weak and tired. He’d probably sleep like a baby that night.

_“Based on what we’ve heard, you seem tough.”_

The sentence echoed through Eddie’s head as he floated through the main corridor of the common building. He couldn’t stop thinking about it.

_What they heard about me could have only come from Richie. This guy, the one who calls me uptight and boring and goes out of his way to annoy me, he thinks I’m **tough**?_

Just before Eddie hit the exit at the end of the hallway, he heard a voice coming from one of the open classroom doors. Not just a speaking voice, but a  _voice_ -voice, a put-on, a  _terrible_   English accent.

“This jabber-wot: the scaliwags accuse  _me_   of graffitiin’ the bloomin’ world and the solution, lads? Lock me up in a bleedin’ room with free bloody access to all the chalk in—”

“Are you talking to yourself?” Eddie asked loud and clear as he stepped into the doorway.

“ _Shit_.” Richie about jumped out of his skin and clutched one of the erasers to his chest. It left a powdery mark on his already dusty and disheveled shirt.  His uniform jacket was tossed inside-out over a chair. “Fuckin’ give me a heart attack, Eds.” He was all alone in the room. Two of the desks in the front row were covered with erasers, and the dirty pile was noticeably larger.

Rolling his eyes, Eddie shifted his hips and stood squarely. “I thought I told you not to call me that.”

“Sorry, EDWARD, I know how much you hate it when I act like we’re pals.” The two dark rectangles in his hands dropped to the floor with a soft plop and he crossed his arms over his chest. “I thought maybe that since we sleep  _four feet_   away from each other we could be—“

“Richie, I don’t  _hate it_   when you—” Eddie sighed and entered the room in a burst, quickly crossing past Richie. He hopped up to sit on the empty desk beside the clean pile of erasers, letting his feet dangle and swing. “Just call me Eddie, okay?”

Richie leaned his butt against the chalk railing of the board. “Sure Ed-die.” His voice was extra bright, and Disney-movie cartoonish. He pushed at the nose-piece of his glasses with one finger. The middle one. “Anything you say, Ed-die.”

Eddie ignored it. “I can’t believe they just leave you unsupervised in here.”

“Carter comes by every once in a while to make sure I’m not setting fire to the desks.” There seemed to be a light sprinkling of chalk all over his entire body, so what Richie said next almost made Eddie laugh.  _Almost_. “Wait a minute, you’re all filthy.” His front teeth bit down on his lower lip when he smiled. He pointed at the infield-sand laden hem of Eddie’s sweat pants. “I didn’t think you did anything besides read. What were you, out eating dirt cakes in the garden?”

“For your information, I just tried out for the baseball team.”

Richie’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “No shit?” He cocked his head. “Was Stanley a big ‘ole dick to you?”

“No? At least not to my face, he wasn’t.” Eddie kicked his legs forward and back, watching his tennis shoes swing and registering the lightness of them in the absence of the cleats he’d just removed. “How come you aren’t on the team?" Not that he  _wanted_   Richie there, it just seemed strange. "I mean, since your friends run it and all.”

Chuckling, Richie slipped his glasses off and held them out for Eddie to grab. “See for yourself why me and sports don't mix.” His face appeared softer without the hyper-magnified lenses covering it. Freckled cheeks and gentle brown eyes with long lashes. The difference was striking and caught Eddie off guard, and not for the first time. Richie wasn’t Keanu Reeves or anything, but he had a quality that Eddie couldn’t put his finger on.

_Enough with that shit. He’s too obnoxious to be cute, and you don’t even care about that kind of stuff anyway._

Eddie gripped the stem between two fingers and placed the frames over his own eyes. The entire room warped. His vision went severely blurry, but the right side was leagues worse than the left. “Jeez, you really can’t see for shit.” He took them off quickly and waved them at Richie to take back. Looking through the glass made him dizzy and a little sea-sick.

“Yeah, I couldn’t hit shit if they let me use a tee.” Richie cleaned the lenses on the underside of his untucked shirt and squinted at Eddie, crinkling up his nose. “I’m even due for a new prescription, if you can believe it.” He placed the glasses back over his eyes. “Gonna need a seeing-eye-dog by the time I’m twenty.”

“That’s an awful thing for you to say.” Even though Richie’d put his glasses back on, the image of him without them stuck. Eddie could still see his bare face plainly just behind the distortion, and he hated it. He wanted to forget all about it. 

“It’s a joke, kid.” He stooped to pick up the erasers he’d dropped and went back to banging them, sending a white cloud of chalk dust billowing across the front of the room. “Oh, shit!” Richie stopped short and frantically fanned the cloud towards the board, away from Eddie. “Should you be breathing this stuff?”

Richie’s concern might have been sweet, but Eddie hated it when people he barely knew assumed that he was fragile. “You’re acting like it’s mustard gas or something.” Furrowing his brow, he shrugged. “It’s just chalk?”

“Yeeeah.” Richie dragged the vowel sound out for way longer than was necessary, face pinched in transparent confusion. “But don’t you have asthma?”

“It’s not that kind of asthma.” Eddie felt his cheeks heating up. His shoulders slumped on their own.

“Oh.” Richie pouted his lower lip and shook his head. “I didn’t even know there were  _kinds_   of asthma.”

_Technically, there **are**  kinds of asthma, but also technically I don’t  **have**  asthma. Technically, my mom is a special brand of crazy and it rubbed off on me. But that’s none of your business, anyway._

“Whenever people see me use my inhaler they think it means I can’t run or I have bad allergies or something. It’s not like that.” Eddie exhaled loudly, trying to find the right explanation. “When I get ups— When I’m like—”

“When you’re put on the spot,” Richie stated, voice soft, sympathy and a fleck of understanding in his tone. “Stressed. Right?”

“Yeah.” Eddie nodded down at the floor. “Basically.” He heard the erasers resume their pounding.

“You think you’ll make the team?” Richie mercifully changed the subject, like he knew it was a sore one without having to be told. “If ya’ want,” he offered, dead serious as he murdered the felt bricks in his hands, “I’ll threaten to make Stan and Bill’s lives a living hell if they don’t pick you.”

Smiling without meaning to, Eddie scrunched up his face to hide it. “You don’t have to do that. I’d rather them want me because they think I’m good.” He jumped down off the desk and picked up two erasers from the dirty pile, smacking them together so hard the noise coming off of them morphed. It sounded like the sharp squeak of a handball popping off a wall.

“Am I dreaming?” Richie cuffed himself lightly on the cheek with the back of his hand. “Or are you actually helping me?”

_Yes, I’m helping you. Because I think that maybe you get treated unfairly around here, even if you’re annoying and deserve to be in trouble most of the time._

“You’re working so slow that you’ll probably miss dinner if I don’t help.” Eddie continued beating the bricks without looking at Richie’s face. The clouds produced by their combined cleaning effort thickened the air between them. “Then I’ll have to listen to you whine about being hungry all night on top of everything else.”

“Aww, Eds, you have to cover up being nice to me by being a dick.” Richie fanned at the dust in the air before aiming a laugh-cough hybrid against his shoulder. “Bill was right about you.” He shook his head and his lips curled in a slow smile.

Eddie stopped clapping and turned towards the taller boy, who flinched almost imperceptibly, like he expected to get a smack on the arm—a correct assumption. If he knew his roommate better, Eddie might have even pinched him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He didn’t want Bill or Richie or anyone else discussing him. That’s how rumors started. Socializing at St. Stan’s had been less stressful than public school from the get-go, and he meant to keep it that way.

Richie shrugged. “You’re a cutie, Eds. That’s all it means.”

_Wait, what? No, no, **no**._

“Don’t call me Eds, and don’t call me cute, either. I mean it.” He hit the erasers together, a bit slower than before, the puffs of chalk punctuating his words. “And I  _swear_   to  _God_ ,  if I  _have_   to say it  _again_ —”

“You’ll what?” Richie stepped a little closer, grinning down at him. “Choke me in my sleep?” He seemed totally unthreatened and impossibly amused. His dark hair was tinged all dusty-white and his magnified eyes shone across Eddie’s face like a spotlight. “’ _If you have to say it again_ ,’  what?” Richie’s tone teased him. It  _begged_   Eddie to do something. Anything. “Whatcha gonna do, Eds?”

Eddie’s breath caught when he realized they were only a couple inches apart. His hands fell to his sides and he almost dropped the erasers when he backed up two paces. Being that close to Richie threw off his equilibrium and he muttered a feeble “Shut up,” looking away.

“See? Cute.”

“Will you just cut it out?” He traded another set of erasers and clapped the dirty ones like he was mad at them, staring at the colorful cork boards at the back of the room.

Snickering, Richie dropped his clean erasers onto the finished pile and picked up another pair. “I don’t know about you,” he hummed, low, like he was letting Eddie in on a deep, dark secret, “but I don’t think they use this many erasers on a daily basis.” He pounded the daylights out of them. “I think they make extra ones dirty to fuck with us.”

_Maybe it’s alright that he never shuts up. He’s really good at changing the subject._

“To fuck with  _you_ ,  you mean. You’re the only person I’ve seen get detention so far.”

“Ehh, it’s been three days. Once people start getting really bored… then you’ll see some shit” Richie grabbed the last pair of dirty erasers and just held them. “I predict,” he intoned, pointing one of the rectangles at Eddie, “that you’re gonna end up in trouble at least once before Halloween.”

“Yeah, right.” Eddie dropped his clean erasers on the desk and began backing away to make a hasty escape. He’d done his good deed for the day. “If I end up in trouble  _at all_ , I’m guessing it’ll be your fault.”

“You leaving?”

“Yep.” He turned and walked the rest of the way to the door without looking back.

“Thanks for your help.” No voices, no jokes, no posturing, just Richie—flat, baseline Richie, being genuine.

Eddie stopped in the doorway but he didn’t have to turn around. He saw Richie without his glasses, his eyes warm and his big teeth getting in the way of his smile. The image was burned into his brain and he didn't want it there. “You’re welcome. See you after dinner.” 

 

***

 

“If you wanted to do an extracurricular, you could’ve joined architecture club.”

“Ben, let him join whatever he wants to. And it’s not even a club yet, it’s just you and me sitting in the library.”

“It’s that  _NOW_ ,  but if more people  _joined_ —”

“Then it would be you and me and  _more people_   sitting in a library.”

“Mike, I need five people on the roster to start a club. If we can’t even get   _Eddie_   to join, then who can we get?”

Eddie barely paid his friends any mind. His eyes kept sneaking their way across the dining hall. Richie had gone straight from banging erasers to the dinner table, looking like he’d been working all day in a salt mine. He’d probably cut it close and take a shower right before curfew like he usually did. How he stood being dirty for that long of a stretch was a mystery to Eddie. Did he plan to beat the chalk out of his wool uniform pants, or did he have a spare set?

_Of course he has a spare set, even I do._

“Are you looking at Richie?”

“What?” Eddie’s head pivoted back quickly to look at Mike. “No.” But he was. Not only was he looking, but he was thinking about him. For a while. He swallowed thickly, coming up with a lie. “I was looking at Stan. Trying to read his mind.”

“How did the tryout go, anyway?” Ben asked as he made mincemeat out of his lasagna.

“I think it went okay,” Eddie replied, fighting the urge to look back across the room. “First practice is tomorrow afternoon if I got it.”

“You got it,” Mike affirmed with a smile.

Eddie returned the smile shyly. “You’ve never even seen me play.”

“Yeah, but you said you were in little league for three years, right? Plus, you’re scrappy.”

“Scrappy?” Eddie poked at his dinner. “Today someone else said I’m ‘tough,’ too. It's weird, because last year I got called ‘little asthma pussy.’”

"Ouch." Mike winced. "This school is seventy-five percent nerds. Someone might eventually give you a hard time, but mostly people are just here to get into a good college, so—”

“ _Anyway_ ,  if you make the team,” Ben broke in, staring right at Mike as he spoke, and Mike immediately flinched at his tone, “something that might be of importance to you is the fact that the bleachers are in a serious need of restructuring, and—”

“How did I know that you were going to say some shit like that?” Mike sighed and leaned his head on his hand. “I swear. He won’t stop talking about it.” He tossed his napkin down on top of his half-finished dinner. “I think Eddie and I should start the ‘we have annoying roommates’ club.”

“Good luck with that.” Ben rolled his eyes. “You need to find three more people to make it official.”

“Hey, you know who might actually care about your bleachers obsession?” Mike jerked a thumb away from their table and stared across the bustling hall, right over to the spot that Eddie was avoiding. "Eddie's annoying roommate."

Eddie followed his eyes and caught Richie, talking loudly with his mouth full. “Why would Richie care about the bleachers?”

“You’re right!” Ben exclaimed, grabbing Mike’s arm and shaking him. “Why didn’t I think of that before?”

“Because you’re a details guy. I’m a big picture guy. That’s why we make a good team.”

“Um, hello?” Eddie slapped his hand on the table to get their attention. “Can you explain to me why—”

“Richie sits on the bleachers reading comics pretty much every day that he doesn’t have detention.” Ben joined Mike and Eddie in staring across the room at their living topic of conversation, who picked that exact second to notice that they were gawking at him.

Richie did a comically exaggerated double-take at the three of them. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “TAKE A PICTURE EDDIE SPAGHETTI, IT LASTS LONGER,” earning himself a shove on the shoulder from Stanley and a scolding from one of the hovering dinner monitors.

“Goddamnit,” Eddie whispered down at his tray. “That means he’s going to be out there during baseball practice, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, he’s usually out there, but I don’t think he interferes with practice.” Mike pointed over Eddie’s shoulder towards the staff table. “Mr. Ryan would blow a gasket.”

“I think he conducts business out there,” Ben replied evenly as he wrote furiously onto a graph paper tablet, “but I have no proof.”

Eddie’s head swung over involuntarily and he gaped at Richie again, foolishly, because Richie was looking right back with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Business? What does that even mean?”

“Richie smokes cigarettes, right?” Ben pressed his hand up under his chin, eyes slightly squinted in thought. “All semester. Where does he get them from?”

Mike held up his hands. “Maybe he brings a bunch of packs from home.”

“He didn’t,” Eddie said slowly, catching Ben’s eye. He tried his hardest to fully envision their first day of school. There was no room in Richie’s bag for more than a couple packs of cigarettes. “He barely had enough luggage to bring his clothes.”

Nodding, Ben wobbled a finger in the air like he’d made a discovery. “I think he sits outside because he smuggles them in. I don’t know exactly  _how_ , but it makes sense to me.”

“Okay, now you’re just reaching and making up rumors.” Mike stood and collected his tray. Other tables had already begun cleaning up and bodies filled the aisles. “Bell’s about to go.”

Ben closed his notes and grabbed his own tray. “It’s a theory,” he mused as he got up to follow Mike.

The barrage of boys busing their trays blocked Eddie’s view of Richie’s table—a good omen, because it meant he couldn’t stare. He sat there and let his eyes go unfocused. Was Richie _actually_   smuggling in cigarettes, or was Ben just another person who unfairly assumed the worst about him? Eddie thought about the first day of school, how Richie’s face looked when Mr. Reilly blamed him for something he didn’t do. Defeated.

“Hey kid, you plan to sleep here or what?”

The voice came from over his shoulder, one of the senior monitors, frustrated by him. “Sorry,” Eddie muttered, still in his head. He collected his tray and joined the line of boys to place it on the conveyor belt. Over the course of half an afternoon, his eagerness to get as far away from his roommate as possible had been replaced with a snowballing curiosity that he didn’t ask for, and didn’t want. Eddie unburdened himself and jogged out of the dining hall to catch up to his friends. He wasn’t going back to his room until a minute before curfew.


	4. A wrench in the system

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some unexpected distractions trip Richie up during what should be a smooth operation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's been a gall-dern month since I updated. Hope you likeee

_Fuck, it’s so hot. But in two months, I’ll be freezing my nuts off and wishing it was still summer. Suck it up, buttercup._

The September heat hung wet and heavy in the air. Beads of sweat migrated tickly trails down Richie’s back, and he fidgeted appropriately, jiggling his knee to keep himself from losing control. All he really wanted at that moment was to shed his wool jacket, chuck it on the ground and stomp on it, but he couldn’t. Not yet. There was a system; a routine that’d worked like clock-work for almost a year. His success was dependent on his abilities to both keep still and appear inconspicuous—a couple of tall orders for him, but not impossible tasks. Screwing it up simply wasn’t an option.

Sitting on the top tier of the bleachers, he plucked at the peeling paint with one hand and held a comic book in the other, pretending to read, just like always. His big stack of comics—the heavy one that he tucked tight against his chest and hefted out to the bleachers every day—sat beside his left hip, just like always. He waited for the signal as patiently as he could manage, knowing that it would come whenever it came, just like always.

That sticky afternoon, things weren’t playing out ‘just like always,’ though, not exactly. Richie’s eyes wandered on their own; his mind focused and unfocused itself. In all his planning for the first drop-off of the school year, he hadn’t accounted for a new distraction to get tossed into the mix. For the first time in his life, he actually gave a shit about watching baseball practice.

Sports had never been Richie’s cup of tea, and he didn’t understand why people devoted their lives to following their favorite teams. The players alternated between standing still and running around in a circle for two hours, with no reward other than a pat on the ass. He found all of it to be pointless, silly, and above all  _boring_. There were no chucks to be had, it was cut and dry, win or lose, cheers or disappointed groans. Laying on the floor in his father’s dusty study listening to old comedy albums from the seventies thrilled him more than the most exciting moment from any given baseball game. So _whyohwhy_   was he struggling to keep himself from peeking over the pages of his  _Adventures of The Thing_ book? 

 _Stop looking over there, idiot. So he’s good at something, so what?_  

Even in Richie’s limited knowledge of the game, it was clear that Eddie was a welcome addition to their shitty baseball team. Not only did the kid move quickly, he had heart, and a seemingly high tolerance for pain. He tossed his body around, showing no outward concerns for his own safety, and made tags that got the rest of the team riled up. Even Stanley was impressed, and he grinned like a fool, shaking the smaller boy by the shoulders after a particularly daring  _Superman-_ esque dive to third base.  

“Hey, uh, Richie, right?”

“Who in the fu—” Richie blinked dazedly over the top of his frames at the unexpected voice, a blurry mass with light hair. Recovering from the surprise quickly, he sang, “Why, a gentleman caller,” in a voice that he believed whole-heartedly to be a passable Blanche Dubois impression. He dropped the comic and slid his glasses a bit higher with one finger. “To what do I owe this kindness, sugar?” Eddie’s friend—the kid who looked like a baby wrestler—was staring up at him from the ground.

“I um—” He had a huge notepad tucked under one arm and seemed a bit nervous, licking at his lower lip. “Can I ask you something?”

“Wait, is this an interview for the  _Sonet?”_ Richie joked, leaning his cheek on his hand. “My people have instructed me to decline all press requests.”

“No, I don’t work on the paper. I’m just—” He frowned and cocked his head, perplexed. “Your people? What people?”

“Jokes; these are the jokes.” Richie reclined back on his elbows, crossing his feet at the ankle. “Ask me something, already.”

The kid hesitated, his face breaking into a pained half-smile before he spoke. “I’m trying to start a club.” He pointed at the triangular structure beneath Richie: the double-sided bleachers. “Our first order of business would be to repair these.”

“Oh-kaaay.” Richie scrunched up his nose. “And this information is useful to me because...?”

He shrugged. “Everyone knows you sit on the bleachers every day.”

“Very observant of  _everyone_.  What’s your name?”

“Ben. We have three classes together and you don’t know my—”

“Lookit Jack Benny, it’s no one’s business that I sit out here. Least of all yours.”

“Oh, yeah, I know,” Ben insisted quickly. “I don’t care what you’re doi—” He shook his head and leaned one knee on the bottom level. “I guess I just figured that since you use them so much you’d care about their upkeep, and—”

“You figured wrong. I like them like this.” He tore at one of the scraps of paint his restless fingers were playing with earlier. “Rickety old antique shit has a certain charm. Now beat it.”

“The whole yard is a communal space.” Ben turned his body and sat down sideways, straddling the lowest tier. “You can’t stop me from sitting here,” he huffed, placing his notebook down in front of himself and crossing his thick arms over his chest.

Irritation took Richie over. “Oh,  _come on,_   dude.” He needed this kid to head for the hills, like yesterday; the clock was ticking. “This right here?” He waved his hands around to include himself and the comic books. “It’s  _my_   club, okay? Membership is closed. If you go to the library you could probably find a bunch of nerds itching to join your stup—”  The signal he’d been waiting for interrupted him: a crunchy hiss of static followed by a click. It meant he had approximately five minutes to get over to the south fence of the school’s property.

Ben narrowed his eyes. “What the hell was that noise?”

“Are you the lost Hardy Boy or something? I didn’t hear shit.”

“You’re full of it. I know what I heard. It sounded like a walkie talkie.”

“Fuck, man,” Richie whined and hung his head, begging, “would’ya just go back inside?”

 “It _was_ a walkie talkie, wasn’t it?” The boy grinned in smug self-satisfaction. “I _knew_  it, you sit out here because you’re smugg—”

“Shut the fuck up,” he hissed, glancing around them.

There were a couple of younger kids out of earshot, flying kites in the expanse of grass beyond the asphalt handball court. The bleachers were dead center in between the baseball and soccer fields, where both teams were holding rowdy, involved practices. No one in the athletic yard paid Richie or Ben any mind, but the key word in the entire operation was discretion. It was obvious that Ben was onto his game, and already knew too much. He might not have worked for the _Sonet,_ but if he talked too loud to the wrong people, Richie was toast for sure.

“ _Ughh_ ,  whatever, fuck it.” He was too pressed for time to deny it, and Ben showed no signs of budging, so Richie gave in. “I’ll show you. But if you tell anyone, I’m gonna—”

He raised up one hand like he was taking the Boy Scout’s Oath. “I promise I won’t say anything.”

Chewing on his lower lip, Richie lifted the stack of comics and placed it in his lap. Anyone with half a brain could have figured out that the pile was too stiff; it was a solid hunk. He beckoned Ben closer with a flap of his hand. “C’mere, before I change my mind.”

Ben hoisted himself up and climbed carefully to the top level. “It’s a pile of comics,” he said uncertainly.

“To the untrained eye, it is.” With a shake of his head, Richie peeled back the top cover to reveal that the center of the stack had been hollowed-out. More than a year prior, he’d glued sixty of his least favorite books together and ruined his mother’s best serrated knife carving out the space in the middle. The walkie talkie that’d chirped a moment before sat in the center of the roughly chopped comics.

“Oh, wow. That’s really cool.” Chuckling, Ben plopped down beside Richie. “Who’s got the other one?”

“A pal of mine. Townie.” He shut the flap and handed the stack over to Ben. “She’s waiting for me right now, so I gotta go.”

“She?” The question came out much smaller than the rest of his responses.

“You interested, Benny? She’s cute. Redhead.” Richie grinned and stood up. “Look, stay here ‘til I get back, okay? It’ll look suspicious if you leave when I do.” He hopped down the bleachers and stopped at the base to glare up at Ben. “I swear, though, if you fuck this whole thing up for me, I’m gonna—”

“I’ll stay right here, and I won’t tell anyone anything.” Ben placed the brick of comics down next to himself and left his hand on top of it. “If you say you’ll join my club.”

“Are you blackmailing me?” Richie tried to keep the impressed smile off his face, but failed. “You’re definitely not the typical nerd I expected you to be.”

Ben retuned the smile, averting Richie’s eyes. “I won’t make you do any actual work, if you don’t want to. I just really need five people to join.”

“You win, okay? I’m in. Be right back.” Richie didn’t wait for an answer, he booked it away from the bleachers, across the grass and over the black-top islands towards the South fence, narrowly missing a head-on collision with a freshman on the tetherball court.

_Red, you better not have bailed._

He chose the spot as the official rendezvous location because the overgrown spruce trees on either side of the fence offered coverage that wasn’t available on any of the other campus borders. If a hawk-eyed teacher peered out the window of the common building, they’d see nothing but a blur of piney green. It was a great smoking spot, and a perfect place to hop over when he felt like sneaking out to take in a movie—which was how he met Beverly in the first place.

Their system wasn’t fool-proof, but they’d yet to be caught by anyone with authority. Richie used his phone privileges to call Bev, placing the order two nights before the trade took place. No news was good news: if Bev couldn’t complete the purchases, she’d call him back the following evening, pretending to be his mother to avert suspicion. On the third day, a page on the walkie meant she’d arrived. Bev committed to waiting no more than seven minutes before throwing in the towel, since Richie tended to get tossed into detention and fuck up their plans.

Richie sat outside every single day that he had the freedom to do so, trade day or not, because he thought it seemed more suspicious if he only went out there on the days Bev came. Rainy days were murder, winter air was torture, but cash-money and free-flowing cigarettes made everything worth it the end. Plus, he liked seeing Bev, even if only for a few minutes.

“Took you long enough.” Beverly looked comfortable and cool, sitting cross-legged on the other side of the wrought-iron fence and puffing on a cigarette. She had on a pair of overall shorts and her red hair was lopped off to her chin. Her small purse sat in the grass beside her with the antenna of the walkie sticking straight up, and in her lap was a plastic _Market Basket_ grocery bag. “I was about to leave and keep all this shit for myself.”

“Sorry,” he panted, bending at the waist with his hands on his knees. “Unexpected…distraction." He held onto his glasses to keep them from falling off. "Shit…fuck…running sucks.”

“You must be about to die of heat stroke in that stupid uniform.” She pushed herself up and came closer to the bars. “Miss me?”

“Of course,” he choked out, catching his breath with his mouth pointed to the ground. “Prettiest dame I seen in a week.” Though she’d made it abundantly clear that she didn’t like Richie _in that way,_ he spoke the truth. Green eyes and soft red curls, but she could probably beat him up if she really wanted to.

Bev rolled her eyes, not buying it. “Said the guy who goes to an all-boys school.”

“I wish they’d let girls in this shithole. We could be roomies.”

“How’s that going, anyway? You still hate him?” She grinned as she stuck her hand through the bars to offer him the tail-end of her smoke.

“Not exactly.” Richie accepted the cigarette and took a drag: a fuck-you to his burning lungs. “He’s okay, I guess. Yesterday he helped me bang erasers when he didn’t have to at all.”

 _Okay_. _He’s okay, I tell her, but he’s more than okay? He’s kind of cool and interesting in this weird way, like those magic-eye posters that I can never get to work because my eyes are so shitty, but I know that there’s something else there, y’know? And if I try harder maybe I’ll see—_

“Richie?”

“Sorry.” He finished up the last puff of her cigarette and dropped the butt into the raw dirt at the base of the fence. “Let’s get this show on the road. I’m on a bigger time-crunch than usual.” He unbuttoned the top three buttons on his white shirt, getting ready.

As she chatted about her own school woes, Beverly passed the items one-by-one through the narrow bars, and Richie stuffed each of them down the neck hole of his undershirt until they were all concealed.

Buttoning his shirt back up, he turned sideways and posed for her. “Do I look weird?”

“You always ask me that, and the answer is the same. ‘Only in the way you always do,’” Bev joked with a wide grin.

“Funny. You’re funny. Shoulda beena comedian.” Richie dug into his pocket and pulled out the wrinkled wad of fives and ones to give Bev her share, plus cost.

“Cool.” She didn’t count the money, just shoved it into the chest pocket of her overalls. “Call me when you wanna sneak out. _Reservoir Dogs_  is playing at the dollar theater.”

“I will. Thanks, Red. See ya.”

 

***

 

Richie clutched the comic brick unnaturally against his stomach to keep from putting pressure on the concealed merchandise. He used his hooked elbow to turn the doorknob, expecting to enter an empty room. When he’d left Bev and crossed the grass to return to the bleachers, the baseball team had already cleared the diamond. He assumed that meant Eddie would’ve wanted to hit up the showers before returning to their shared space. He assumed wrong. 

“Hey.” Eddie sat on the edge of his bed with one pant leg hiked almost up to his knee, still dressed in his dusty practice clothes. His cleats were neatly tucked under the bed, lined up with his other shoes. “I didn’t expect you to come back so early,” he mumbled, resting his hand over a travel first-aid kit that was opened up next to him. It looked like he was trying to hide it, but his spread palm was too small.

“Did you get a boo-boo?” Richie walked the length of the room to drop the comic stack on the top of his desk. “Y’know it’s only practice, kid. Not the World Cup or whatever.”

“World Series,” Eddie corrected with a smirk. “I got a few scrapes; it’s not that serious.”

“You should go to the infirmary, anyway. The nurse can—”

“ _No,”_  he barked, so harshly that Richie jumped. “Sorry.” He paused for a few seconds. When he spoke again, it sounded like he put effort into being gentle. “I don’t like people fussing over me. It’s not a big deal; I just can’t reach it that well to clean it.”

“I can help you clean it.” He took off his jacket and flung it towards his desk chair. “And I won’t fuss over you. Pinky swear.”

“Okay, if you want to.”

Richie unbuttoned his dress shirt and tossed it on the floor. “Just give me one sec.” He began peeling his undershirt off. “I guess there’s no point in trying to hide it from you.”

“Why do you have to take off your shirt to help—” Eddie stopped dead when the shirt came off. He squeezed his eyes shut tight. His voice went thin and a little high. “Uh. Why are you wearing a bra?”

“Becaushe, shee? It’sh the eashiest way to shneak thingsh into tha joint, shee?” Richie did his best Bugsy impression as he leaned over and dumped his bounty out of the bra-cups and onto his bedspread: six packs of smokes, two lighters, three airplane bottles of rum, a nudie-magazine folded into the tiniest square possible, and a small pile of individually wrapped chocolate covered cherries, which had probably already begun to melt. “If you’re not on disciplinary restriction you can leave the school grounds on the weekend, but they--” he air-quoted with a heavy roll of his eyes "--‘ _randomly_ ,’ check people for paraphernalia. Random. Sure.”

“You actually— I mean, you sneak—" Eddie sputtered from the edge of his bed, eyebrows struggling and twitching as he shook his head side to side. “I— I didn’t—"

“What are you shocked-speechless over it?” Richie reached behind his back to unhook the bra. It was the only thing he didn't shed haphazardly. He folded one cup inside the other and jammed it into his desk drawer. “Think I’m gonna burn in hell?”

“No.” Eddie blinked down at the floor. He waggled his head, reconsidering. “I don’t know, maybe? That’s what my Ma would think.”

“Momma Kaspbrak sounds like a stiff. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, am I right?”

“Fuck you,” Eddie said, low, and completely benign. He pulled supplies out of the first-aid kit and lined them up on the bed: sealed alcohol wipes, a tube of antibiotic ointment, and three over-sized rectangular sticky-backed bandages. “I’m not a _stiff_ ,  okay? I just don’t like getting in trouble. You obviously don’t ca—”

“Fuck trouble. I make like seventy-five on a good week doing this. Twenty bucks off’a the smokes alone.”

Raising his eyebrows, Eddie wiggled a surprised shake of his head. "Really? That's a lot of money."

“You bet your ass. I charge five bucks a pack: one seventy-five is the actual cost, one twenty-five for Bev, two for me. Boom. Profit.”

“Who’s Bev?”

“My friend on the outside. So, do you want my help or what?”

Eddie’s mouth dropped open. His eyes bounced off Richie’s bare tummy and up his skinny torso. “Yeah, sure,” he said quietly. “I just don’t know how to—” He shifted his weight and twisted his knee a bit to show the wounds on the back of his lower keg. “It’s kind of in an awkward spot.”

Richie shuffled over and parked himself down beside Eddie on the bed. He patted his knee. “Lay down and put your leg over my lap.” When Eddie replied with an eyeroll, he bristled, losing patience. “How the fuck else am I suppose’ta see what I’m doing?”

“I guess. Fine.” Eddie did as he was told. He laid flat on his stomach and gingerly stretched his afflicted leg back across the top of Richie’s thighs. His other leg rested behind Richie, just brushing the top of his tail bone. 

“Damn, this is some serious road rash.” The damage began near Eddie’s ankle and continued midway up the back of his calf; three large skinned patches that exposed bright-pink raw flesh. Sand from the infield was wedged underneath the folded-back skin of the lowest scrape. Richie wondered how soon into practice it happened, and if the kid kept going despite it. He glanced at Eddie’s prone form, eyes getting stuck on the back of his neck. The hair at the nape of it was curly from sweat. “Are you sure you want me to-- This’ll hurt real bad if I clean it with alcohol.”

“I don’t care about that,” Eddie said, his words garbled. “Just make sure you get all the dirt out.”

“You might not care, kid,” Richie muttered as he pushed the hem of Eddie’s sweatpants up closer to his knee, “but I’m not exactly keen on inflicting pain on you.”

“Didn’t say you have to like it.” The grin in his voice was audible. “Who knew you were such a softy, Tozier?”

“A _softy_?” He shook his head roughly and grabbed a few alcohol pads, ripping the wrappers with his front teeth. “I’ll show you a softy.” But that was a load of bullshit tough-guy talk, because as he cleaned the cuts, every little whimper Eddie let slip past his lips made Richie wince. After four cringes, Richie cracked. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Eds.”

“Don’t call m—” Eddie stopped himself and exhaled slowly. The weight of his leg got a little heavier against Richie’s thighs. “It’s fine, Richie.” His tone relaxed along with his body. “I’d rather it hurt now than get an infection later.”

“Okay.” Richie continued cleaning, swabbing gently but quickly. Eddie's leg resting on top of his was warm, the contact comfortable. “You really go all-out just for practice, huh?”

“I guess? It’s been a long time since I was able to play and I…just kinda want to see if I’m still any good.”

“It may not mean anything, since I don’t know shit about fuck, but you seem like you’re pretty good.” He swiped the last of the sand out of the bottom wound.

“You think so?”

“Yup,” he hummed before tossing the used pads into the waste can under Eddie’s desk. “Stan thinks so, too. I can tell.”

“You were watching me for that long?”

He involuntarily sucked in a breath and held it, hoping that Eddie couldn’t feel the change in his body language. “Yeah, uh, y’know, a little bit.” 

_I was watching you for a while. I couldn't stop watching, in fact, and it's really annoying Eds, because I hate baseball._

Richie grabbed the antibiotic ointment and squirted dabs into the center of each spot on Eddie’s leg. “You want me to put these big old bandaids on you, or… I mean, you're beat up all-over in a rough spot.”

“Mmn-hmn, cover them up.” Eddie adjusted himself so his head was propped up on his hands. “So…all that stuff you had in the bra? People ask you to get it?”

“Yup.” He peeled the backer off one of the bandages and stuck it down gently against Eddie’s skin. “Some freshman wanted the _Playboy._ Bevvie stole it from her uncles underwear drawer—strict profit.”

“Who’s the candy for?”

“Oh, uh,” Richie chuckled, embarrassed. “Those are mine.”

“Can I have one?”

“Y’know what, I think you can have one Eddie Spaghetti.” Richie stuck the last bandage in place. He clapped his hand roughly on the back of Eddie’s thigh. “Since you were such a good boy at the doctor’s today.”

“Ew, shut up. For that, I want two.”

“You're all done. Get offa me and you can have three.”

Eddie crawled forward and turned around, his knees bent up in front of himself like a splay-legged foal. His cheeks and neck were flushed, and Richie couldn’t tell if it was from the sun, or from exerting himself at practice, or from something else entirely. “Thank you, for—”

“Nah. You helped me clean erasers; I helped you clean your cuts. Even Stevens.” He bounced up and over to his own bed to sort through his merchandise. “I gotta go play delivery man before dinner bell.”

“Right. I’m gonna go take a shower.”

“Good plan. Instead of Eddie Spaghetti I’m gonna start calling you Eddie Limburger Cheese.” It was a joke, plain and simple. After his intense practice, Eddie smelled like summer, like he’d been out running through sprinklers and rolling in high-grass. Pleasant and earthy.

“Are you trying to say I smell?” Snickering, Eddie dug around in his dresser and pulled out a pair of jeans. “People who live in smelly wool pants shouldn’t throw—”

“Think fast,” Richie shot back, tossing a chocolate covered cherry across the room without thinking.

Quick as a bolt of lightening, Eddie snapped his elbow out and twisted his forearm in one motion, catching the candy in his cupped palm just before it whacked him in the chest.

 _He’s fucking really good at that, and he doesn’t know it_. _Why don’t you know it, Eds?_

“Fuck. Reflexes for days.” Richie pulled his undershirt back over his head, nearly knocking his glasses off his face. “Go take your shower. I’ll leave the cherries on your desk.”

“ ‘Kay." Eddie grabbed his shower stuff and his towel, inching towards the door. "Really though, thanks, Richie.”  He blinked in a flutter, looking right into Richie’s eyes. The color that’d been painting his cheeks a few moments before had settled back to his natural olive complexion.  “For your help.”

“Anytime, Eds.” He meant it. He wanted to say something else, but the words didn’t come easy and sounded too weird in his head.

_Try to be more careful next time, because I don’t like having to hurt you._

_I saw you blush, kid, you blushed because your leg was touching mine, right?_

_Things are a lot cooler when we don’t hate each other. Truce infinity._

The door shut behind Eddie with a loud click, knocking Richie back to reality. Before he left the room to deliver cigarettes and booze and titties to the boys of St. Stan’s like a delinquent Santa Claus, Richie put three cherries on Eddie’s desk, giving him four total. A clean half of what he ordered for himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the average cost of cigarettes in 1992 was $1.79, CAN YOU BELIEEEEVE?


	5. I think it was his hip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie checks in with Sonia, and the call has an unexpected consequence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set on the same day as the previous chapter, later in the evening.

Eddie stared at the shiny silver border of the payphone’s coin return so hard that his eyes crossed. The sounds of other boys’ evening calls home drifted to him, melding together into a murmur of a hum. He held the receiver slightly out from his ear, willing his mind to wander away, but the shrillness invading his head droned on with fervor, tethering him to the present. It was a sad truth, one he didn’t realize until he’d gone without, but the recognition, the clarity, made him feel whole: his mother’s voice filled him with a nervous dread that originated in the pit of his stomach and threatened to spread to his lungs.  _She_   did that to him. Just Sonia Kaspbrak-Chersky, being herself.

“—called you Wednesday and yesterday, Edward. You didn’t come to the phone. Not even for a few minutes? How could you refuse two calls from your mother? My heart is  _broken_   without you, and you have the nerv—"

“I’m calling you back now, Ma.” Eddie cut her off, answering in flat tones. If he let his emotions take the lead, they’d end up in a passive-aggressive arm wrestling contest from two hundred twenty-five miles away. “Aren’t you happy to hear from me?”

It was only the fifth evening he’d spend as a boarding school student, and the first time he’d taken the initiative to call her. She’d rang him every night since he arrived, and he’d refused her twice. The simple act of telling the phone monitor  _“I’m busy, take a message,”_   was exhilarating to Eddie. Five words spoken. Five words that meant he didn’t have to listen to her nagging, or be made anxious by her judgements, or lie through his teeth to appease her.

“I  _am_   happy to hear from you, Eddie-bear,” she said tightly.

“Doesn’t sound like it.”

Sonia sighed and dropped the topic. “Are you staying out of trouble?”

_Let’s see, I’m an accessory to a smuggling operation, plus today I ripped my leg open playing baseball and let a boy who probably never washes his hands clean the cuts._

“Yes, I am.”

“Have you met any nice boys?”

“A few.” He tried not to wince as he prepared himself to lie. “I joined architecture club.”

“That sounds like it’s dangerous.”

“It’s not.” His mother would easily shift their conversation to medication and inhalers if he didn’t choose a topic, so he dove into the fantasy head first. “It’s mostly just drawing up plans and talking. I’m not actually going to be building anything.” At least the last part wasn’t a lie.

“Clark suggested that you should start playing a sport to make a man out of you, but I told him about what happened when you played baseball. How  _awful_ it was _._ ”

Eddie rolled his eyes so hard they stung for a second. “I got a black eye, and you made me stop playing. I was fine—”

“Absolutely  _nothing_   about that was  _fine_ ,  Edward. Do you really think—”

“Ma, listen,” Eddie broke in, desperate. He was too exhausted to let her go on. “We have a time limit on calls and I’m getting the signal that I have to wrap up.” He didn’t know if any of that was even vaguely true, but he went with it.

“Oh. Alright, dear.” Sonia relented, her voice shrinking down almost to that of a little girl. “I miss you and I love you, Eddie-bear. Please take your medicine, and call—”

“Sure will, Ma. Love you, bye.”

“Edward, wait! I need you to—”

He slammed the phone down onto her protests.

 

 

***

 

_His heart hammered so hard that he was afraid it might split his chest open, but he couldn’t stop moving. With each step he gained a little more momentum, but the path wasn’t clear. There were trees in the way of his escape, and their branches bumped and pulled against his arms, though he couldn’t smell them._

_(they’re plastic. they feel like pool toys.)_

_Every muscle inside Eddie’s body screamed bloody murder. Run!!! Get away!!! He plunged forward, shoving too-bright foliage out of the way with both hands. There were no sounds. Not even a patter from his footfalls. He dared not look back to check behind because—_

_(SHE’S GAINING ON YOU)_

_—and in front of him, nothing existed but the still forest that went on for miles ahead._

_(there’s nowhere to run to; it goes on forever.)_

_He came to a fork, and normally he would have known which one was right, without a map or a plan or the stars or anything, it would have just FELT right but—_

_(she’s going to catch you and she’s going to know and she’ll drag you back where you came from, so keep!! moving!!!)_

_—he didn’t have shoes on, and he didn’t know where he began the journey. The ground grew more uneven and wetter by the second. Sticky. He realized belatedly that he’d sunk into it, thigh deep._

_(it’s like the fucking swamp of sadness from the neverending story oh fuck its real oh shi—)_

“Hey. Eddie.”

_(don’t listen; don’t stop. It’s a trap—a **trick** )_

“Wake up, Eds.”

_(it’snotherit'snotherit'snother i t ' s n o t h e r IT'SN)_

“C’mon Eddie; I can’t fuckin’ sleep with you spazzing out over here. Eds?”

Eddie jolted awake and blinked wildly up at the ceiling. “Fuck,” he gasped, breath heaving, lungs burning. His shirt was damp and the covers were tangled around his legs. He wasn’t in a forest, and no one was chasing him.  

_School. I called her and then I came back and fell asleep reading._

“You okay?” The disembodied whisper was delivered gently and smelled fresh, like  _Irish Spring_   soap. “Do you need your inhaler?”

 _Richie_.  _I woke Richie up. Fuck._

“No, I don’t need my—” Eddie sat up and kicked the blankets down to the foot. “Sorry I woke you, I—”

“Uh-uh, it’s cool.” Richie’s sleep-thick voice got taken over by a smile. “I don’t really like sleeping, anyway.”

“Sure you don’t,” he muttered sarcastically. Eddie’s eyes slowly adjusted to the barely moon-lit room, and he saw the outline of his roommate standing over the bed. “Is it late?”

Richie’s hair was a bird nest of a shadow surrounding his head. He didn’t have his glasses on, and his shiny eyes were the only part of his face Eddie could see clearly. “Yeah, really late.”

Eddie turned over onto his stomach. He flipped his pillow, pressing the edge of his sweaty face into the cool side. The dream still coursed through his veins, leaving him keyed up and wide awake. He felt like he’d actually been running, and could probably have hopped out of bed and ran a full fifteen laps without stopping. “I don’t think I’ll be able to get back to sleep now,” he muttered, more pathetically than intended.

“Scootch over?”

“Oh, uh,” was all he managed as a reply, but he understood what Richie was asking. It was an unsolicited offer of closeness, something Eddie would expect from a best friend, if he had one, but not from this boy that he barely knew. This boy that he’d been less than nice to since the moment they met. Inching his hips and then his chest, he scootched, rocking himself along until his left side was flush with the wall.

The bed dipped slightly towards Richie’s added weight. He settled flat with his head directly against the mattress. “That dream must’ve been a doozy. Your hands were like—” He hovered his arms above his chest, scissoring his fingers like they were lobster claws. The movement made the bony knob of his elbow bump against Eddie’s shoulder. “—it was creepy, man. I thought you were possessed.” He brought his hands down and rolled on his side. “What were you dreaming about?”

“I was being chased,” Eddie whispered, “in the woods, I think. Or a swamp, maybe.”

“They didn’t catch ya.” Richie leaned his head on his hand, pivoting his elbow on the bed. “You had a bad dream because you ate a bunch of junk right before bed,” he reasoned, referencing the three chocolate covered cherries Eddie’d stuffed in his mouth just before lights out.

“Wrong.” Eddie turned on his side so they were facing each other. “I dreamed about my mom because I just talked to her on the phone. That’s how dreams work: whatever your mind is thi—”

“Wait, you had a nightmare that your mom was chasing you?” He bit down on his lower lip through a grin. “All the dreams _I_   have about your mom are pretty nice.”

Eddie snorted, laughing without wanting to. “ _Asshole_ ,” he grunted, shoving Richie one hard pump in the chest. It wasn’t until his hand connected with warm skin that he realized Richie didn’t have a shirt on. He snatched it back like he’d been burned and fluttered it by his hip, grateful for the darkness hiding the blush that was undoubtedly creeping up his neck. “ _No one_   has  _EVER_  had a dream like that about my mom,” he declared, hoping that it came out stern, but he was smiling too hard to scare anyone. “Not even her new husband.”

Richie rolled onto his back and folded one arm up over his head. “Well if she’s scary enough to give you a bad dream, then maybe I don’t even wanna bang her.”

“New topic,” Eddie warned, his voice light but serious, “or I’m gonna put you in a sleeper hold.”

“Hmm wow, under the cover of night, please note that the Spaghetti Man is shovey and violent.”

“Don’t,” he whispered. With a shake of his head, Eddie changed the subject himself, his curiosity getting the better of him. “Do you miss your parents?”

“Not as much as I miss having phone sex with—”

Eddie clapped his hand over Richie’s mouth, and brought his face closer. “What did I just say?”

Richie made no attempt to get away. “M’I  ‘usth wam’id Ta’smee wu-Ap’in,” he slurred, his eyes warm and smiley in the dark.

Snickering, Eddie took his hand back. “You what?”

“I said that I wanted to see if you would actually choke slam me. And you didn’t.” Richie sighed, his face going serious as he squinted over at Eddie.  “Uh, let’s see: do I miss my parents? I dunno. I kinda don’t even remember what my dad looks like sometimes. That sounds really sad, and like, orphany, but he works a lot, plus I’m at school for like eight full months of the year.”

“For six years,” Eddie added softly.

“Yup. This might be a stupid question, since your mom gives you nightmares and all, but do  _you_   miss your parents?”

“I thought I did—my mom at least—but now…”

“No?"

“No.” They were both quiet for a minute. “Richie?”

“Yeah, Eds?”

He said what he should have said the first night. “I’m sorry for being a dick to you.”

Richie laughed from his belly, too loud for the hour, and smacked his own hand over his mouth. When he recovered, he whispered, “It’s okay, Eds.” He yawned and rolled back and forth from the force of it, squeaking and stretching and shaking the whole bed. “Fuck, I’m gonna have a craving for brains tomorrow. At least it’s Saturday.”

“Do they still wake us up early?”

“Oh right, your first weekend. Don’t be the dork that wears his uniform by accident; you can wear whatever you want. Bells’ll go off at nine instead of seven. And breakfast is usually something good like waffles.”

Eddie just hummed in response.

“You have practice tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah. I think that’s why I had that dream.”

Richie took too long to answer. His voice was sleepy. “Because of practice?”

“Because of baseball. My mom would kill me if she knew I even tried out.”

“Why…” Richie yawned again, stifling it against his knuckles. “…would she kill you?”

“She…she’s just…I don’t even really know how to explain it. If she knew that I scraped up my leg, she’d probably get in her car and drive three hours just to make sure it’s not infected, if that helps give you an idea.” He waited for Richie to say something but the silence stretched. “Richie?”

Richie’s left arm was still tucked up over his head and the other one rested on top of his chest. He didn’t budge at the sound of his name.

Eddie tried again, whispering, “Richie, are you awake?” Nothing. He sat up straight, inching his hands towards the foot of the bed at a snail's pace, because he didn’t want to be the asshole who woke up his roommate twice in one night. Though he'd only ever shared a bed with cousins, and during an era when he still wore footie pajamas, it didn’t feel weird or awkward to have Richie beside him.

Grabbing the edge of the blanket, Eddie stretched it out and pulled it up over both of them before turning on his side to face the wall. He settled down into a position that was comfortable, which meant that his lower back rested against some warm part of Richie. He fell asleep trying to guess which part.

 

***

 

The massive windows that took up three-quarters of the back wall of the dining hall let a criminal amount of light inside. Eddie wished he had a big pair of sunglasses to shield his tired eyes from the glare. He sat in his practice clothes with an elbow on the table, head leaning against his hand, poking listlessly at the silver dollar pancakes on his plate. They weren’t the waffles that’d been promised to him, but they were close enough, he supposed. Mike and Ben were across the table, eating and chattering, both bright-eyed and well-rested. Eddie barely heard the words they said because his mind was occupied.

 _I should have thanked him better before he fell asleep. For fixing my leg_   ** _and_  ** _for being nice to me, even though I woke him up. Why can I never think of the right thing to say?_

When the nine o'clock bells chimed their weekend wake-up call, Eddie'd woken up all alone. The room was empty, but the space Richie'd slept in still smelled like his soap; a smell that reminded Eddie of little league, and of rough and tumble boys who didn’t have sensitive skin like he did. Ever since he was small, he’d been simultaneously jealous of, annoyed by, and enamored with those sort of boys. He envied their freedom, and the way they just belonged without having to try.

Eddie had no doubts that younger Richie had been just like those boys. When he was in elementary school, he probably ripped his pants climbing trees and made dirty crank phone calls to teachers and got his comic books taken away for swearing at the dinner table. He embodied everything that Sonia would hate in a person, which was all the more reason for Eddie to change his mind about him.

Without warning, a tray plopped down beside his own, and Eddie jumped. On top of the tray was a plate with a double helping of pancakes, two chocolate milks, and a pudding pack—a snack that wasn’t normally available during breakfast.

“Since I’m in your stupid club,” Richie said, pulling out the only empty chair and turning it around to sit backwards, “I guess I have to be your friend now, right Bennifer?” He had on a bright yellow teeshirt with a huge lizard on it and a beat up pair of jeans.

 “It’s just Ben,” Ben chuckled, throwing Eddie a quick appraising glance. “And, uh, yeah, if you want to sit— I mean if it’s okay with—”

“What, you think Eds doesn’t want to sit with me?” Richie turned his head to grin Eddie’s way. “Do you want me to go away?” he asked mournfully, with totally phony pout. He threw a hand over his brow dramatically like a damsel in distress and clenched his eyes shut. “Say the word, and I’ll banish myself, never to be heard from again.”

Eddie rolled his eyes but couldn’t help smiling. “I was gonna say you can stay, ‘til you started in with the hysterics.”

“No hysterics,” Richie insisted, dropping at once both the act, and his hand into his lap. “Nope, no hysterics,” he repeated with a serious nod. “Just club business over pancakes, like Mother intended.”

“Are you serious about joining our club?” Mike asked, one eyebrow raised. He looked totally wary, which surprised Eddie. Out of all the students he’d met so far, Mike was the most accepting and least skeptical. “We’re hard up for members, but if you think it’s a joke—"

“This is Mike, by the way,” Eddie interrupted, “He’s usually nicer.”

“Sorry.” Mike cringed a little, reconsidering. “Yeah. I just— You’re actually going to help?”

“Sure,” Richie chirped, confident at first, but then he lowered his head bashfully. “Well, I don’t know how to build anything, don’t have a clue about that, but no one’s ever asked me to join anything before, so I might as well.” He delivered the words in a neutral tone, but it was such a lonely statement that Eddie’s heart tripped over its own beat.

“Ben can show you what to do,” he told Richie reassuringly. He felt eyes on him and looked across the table at Ben and Mike, who were giving him matching confused looks.

“Yeeeeah,” Ben drawled slowly, smirking at Eddie. “I can show you everything.” He turned his attention down to his plate. “We won’t be building anything for a while, though.”

“It’s all about planning for now,” Mike added. “What we need to do is come up with an idea to raise money for materials.”

“I have money,” Richie said casually as he opened one of his cartons of milk. “A whole bunch.”

“Is that because of your—” Ben stopped and shook his head when Richie’s eyes narrowed at him. “No, never mind. How much is  _a whole bunch?”_

Richie tipped his head back, checking around to make sure no one at a nearby table was listening. “Quadruple digits,” he whispered, pushing his glasses up on his nose.

Mike almost choked on a mouthful of pancake, and Ben pounded on his back. When he could speak, he croaked, “I’m sorry, you have  _how much?”_

“ _Shhhhh,”_ Richie hissed, grimacing. “I’ll have  _nothing_   if the wrong person finds out, so shut your trap.” His face softened while he cut up his pancakes. “If you figure out how much the supplies cost, I can fund it, that’s all I’m saying.”

“But why would you give—” Eddie watched Richie carefully, searching for the answer on his freckled face. “I mean, you earned it.”

After shoving a huge forkful into his mouth, Richie was quiet for a minute, chewing. “I thought about it, and the baseball team deserves to have nice bleachers.”

“When did you think about it?” Eddie didn’t intend for his voice to come out so soft.

“Just now, Eds.” Richie reached over and ruffled a hand through Eddie’s hair with a grin.

Eddie ducked away, frowning and willing himself not to go red. “Don’t do that,” he told his plate.

Ben cleared his throat. “That’s really generous, Richie, but won’t the administration wonder where the money came from?”

Richie stuck his tongue in between his lips, nodding slowly. “We could set up a dummy fundraiser. Bake sale; car wash; lemonade stand; some stupid shit that would never make any real money.”

“Yeah.” Mike drummed his fingers on the table. The skeptical look he wore earlier was erased by a smile. “An idea man.” He elbowed Ben excitedly. “We needed an idea man.”

Flinching back from Mike’s jabs, Ben flipped open his notebook and stopped on a page with a sketch he’d drawn. “After breakfast, let’s have a meeting outside.” He moved the book so it was in between himself and Mike. “We can rough-measure the bleachers. I want an estimate of how much wood we’ll need.” They broke off into a quiet conversation about raw lumber.

“Did you sleep okay after everything?” Richie asked Eddie, lowering his voice, presumably so Ben and Mike wouldn’t hear, but they were oblivious. “No more dreams?”

“No; no more,” Eddie answered quickly. “What time did you wake up?”

Richie took off his glasses and placed them on the table. There were blue-ish rings under his eyes, and he rubbed them roughly with balled fists. “I dunno, like eight?” Lowering his voice even more, he whispered, “I woke up half on the floor. You’re a really shovey person, even when you’re sleeping.”

Eddie didn’t know what to say to that. He could be shovey sometimes, when he was comfortable with someone, or excited, but usually only with people he trusted, like his little league team or his cousins. Now, suddenly, he was apparently also shove-comfortable with Richie. Richie, who’d somehow become his breakfast buddy. Sans glasses, his momentary blindness gave Eddie an opportunity to rake his eyes over the other boy’s hair. It was a wreck like it usually was but one totally disobedient curl stuck out further than all the rest. He wanted to reach out and tuck in in place.

“Eds?” Richie stopped rubbing at his eyes and blinked, squinting until the top of his nose crinkled. He picked up his glasses and slipped them on. “Did I Iose you?”

“Oh. No, I—” was all Eddie brought to the surface as he tore his eyes away. Out of habit, he glanced in the direction of the table where Richie would normally sit, and caught Stan looking their way with interest. He shook his head and stared back at his plate; the safest place to focus. “I’m sorry that I’m shovey,” he muttered, wondering if he’d really been shoving Richie in his sleep, or trying to cuddle with him (something he hoped he'd grown out of, and a frequent teasing topic at family sleepovers; sleep-cuddle-Eddie). Either scenario made him want to shrivel up and hide.

“I think  _shovey_ ,  like as a quality? It’s underrated,” Richie said simply with a half-shrug. He went back to eating his breakfast and only accomplished picking up his fork before he butted into Ben and Mike’s conversation.

 _Shovey is underrated._ An odd compliment that felt as reassuring as a hug from where Eddie sat. For the first time since he arrived in the hall, he turned his outward attention to fueling his body, wrestling with a puckery, full face smile for the rest of the meal. Maple syrup and butter; sweet chocolate milk. Richie sitting beside him, too loud, sure, but nothing about it was bad. Not bad in the slightest.

 

 

***

 

Eddie sat on the bench behind the cyclone fence, putting on his cleats. He'd pulled two tube socks onto his left foot. They were stretched up to his knee and tucked under the hem of his sweat pants—a feeble attempt to protect his scrapes from additional damage. He knew that if he had to slide, he’d do it without thinking twice, and the threat of tearing his leg open again was a real one. It was a worry he’d absorbed from his mother, and he tried to knock the idea out of his head.

_You’re not delicate. You never were. Cuts heal._

“Hey, Eddie.” Stan’s voice came from behind him. “Can I put you in the outfield for a little while?”

“Yeah, sure.” He got out of his own head and bent to lace up his shoe.

Stan plunked himself down on the bench, closer to the edge than to Eddie. “So Richie’s watching practice,” he commented airly as he straightened his socks.  

His words felt like permission to stare, and Eddie looked across the field at the bleachers, where the newly assembled architecture club was convened, just like they’d planned at breakfast. He locked onto a gaping Richie, who turned his head sharply the other direction. “Does he not usually watch you guys?”

Chuckling, Stan shook his head. “Never. He thinks baseball is pointless and stupid.”

“He does?” Frowning, Eddie continued staring across the space, watching Richie—who’d morphed into a whirring blur of bright yellow and gangly arms—interacting with Ben and Mike. If he hated baseball, why did he care about giving the team new bleachers? “You’ve known him since he first got here, right?”

Stan nodded. “As much as anyone can know Richie.” He huffed a brief but forceful sigh. “I think he doesn’t know himself.”

Finishing up with his laces, Eddie furrowed his brow. “What does that mean?” 

Stan stood up and folded one arm across his chest and then the other, stretching his shoulders. “It means that Richie talks a lot, but he doesn’t always communicate.” He smirked before walking away, shouting, “Outfield swap! Bring it in left-center!”

Eddie left the cryptic Richie conversation behind. He grabbed his glove, hopped up and jogged over the sandy infield into the poorly upkept grass to his position. He pounded his hand into the mitt and crouched, trying to keep his attention on the mound, but a swatch of color in his periphery was all he could see.

There were more things he wanted to ask Stan, who’d told him a lot without revealing much.

_Richie talks a lot but he doesn’t communicate. He’s communicated with me. Shared with me, private stuff._

“HEADS UP!”

The fly-ball arched down out of the sky like it was magnetically attracted to his hand. He snapped, leaned, slung it to second, and the defender made the tag on the base runner. Bill gave a little  _whoop_   at the speed of the play and shouted to run it again. Eddie raised his head and only saw Richie, all teeth and glasses, giving him a thumbs up.


	6. He's blind, but it has nothing to do with his eye-sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Friday evening. A week has passed since Eddie's bad dream. Richie’s been AWOL and it's causing some tension with his friends.

Richie motored down the hallway towards Stan and Bill’s room, jittery as all hell and licking his lips. He'd deliberately left Bill's delivery for last. The visit would be a quick stop and drop, five minutes tops, but if given the option he would’ve preferred slamming his dick in a drawer.

It was really obvious that Stan was ticked off at him. Richie didn't need to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out. Most people got louder when they had a gripe, but not Stan the Man. He got a little bit quieter. More business-like.

For almost an entire week, whenever Richie got off a good one in the classes they shared, Stanley would hiss a dismissive  _shush_ instead of his standard smirk’n’shove. During meals—the ones Richie was present for, anyway—Stan would purposely change the topic of conversation to something Richie knew nothing about to exclude him. Neither of those methods effectively shut Richie up, but they got the message across without words. A well-deserved message: Stanley had a right to be sore.

Stan and Bill were the only boys that gave Richie the time of day when he first transferred to their shitty school. They generously accepted him  _As is_ ,  and it became customary for him to spend all of his evenings in their space. The three of them did homework, shot the shit, read comics, and complained about anything bugging them. Richie considered them to be his best friends, but he went ahead and dropped them like a bad habit in the space of six days. It wasn’t like he intended to be a jerk, not really. He had simply never been more occupied in his life.

Maintaining his already time-consuming contraband business while stirring in architecture club meetings left Richie stretched thin. He also capitalized on his newfound option to table-hop in the dining hall, trading Stan and Bill and their eye-rolls for a fresh audience. An audience that hadn’t grown tired of listening to his jokes yet. An audience that just so happened to include a particular person that he wanted to impress.

In six years of boarding school, Richie’d never had a roommate he considered a friend. He usually found himself rooming with boys who fell into one of two categories: uptight nerds or meathead jocks. Eddie managed to be both and neither of those things at the same time. Or maybe he was his own category altogether. 

Classification: _Paradoxicus maximus._  A soft rosebush with sharp thorns. A tough leather jacket with weakly stitched seams. A bitter chocolate drop with a sweet cherry surprise inside.

Ever since the night he woke up to the sounds of Eddie thrashing around in his bed, Richie went directly back their room after supper, claiming that he needed to study, but the things that needed studying had nothing to do with school.

The first important thing Richie learned was that he could crack Eddie up by doing impressions of their teachers, and Smiley Reilly was his favorite. His enjoyment started with a little pucker of his mouth--a frown to hide a smile--then he’d choke out a giggle and tell Richie to shut up, leave him alone, he had work to do, but he’d drop his pencil into his loose-leaf and turn around in his chair regardless.

He wouldn’t have willingly admitted it to anyone, but Richie lived for those moments. Having Eddie’s full attention. Hearing him snort before he full on belly-laughed. Watching as he self-consciously clapped a hand over his mouth. Listening to him babble on about baseball practice, though Richie had no idea what the fuck he was talking about half the time. Experiencing the way that his big eyes lit up when got off a good one of his own, usually a well-timed insult lobbed right at Richie’s face. 

Richie couldn’t get enough of it; there weren’t enough free hours in the school day to quench his thirst. Something in his life had to shift to make room, and the most expendable pieces of that puzzle were Stan and Bill. He hadn’t totally abandoned them or anything; at least they had each other. And besides, sometimes he felt like a third wheel in their presence, so he wasn’t about to go into some flowery apology for spending time with someone who made him feel wanted.

That’s what Richie told himself as he sucked in a deep breath, preparing himself to knock on the door.  

 _In and out. Give Billy the candy and vamoose. Here goes nothin’_ _._

Pounding on the door three times with his balled fist, Richie pushed a deep, well-practiced voice out of his diaphragm.  _“ALRIGHT, SCUMBAGS! LAPD! OPEN UP!”_

After a few seconds, the door opened halfway. Stan’s drawn face appeared, framed by damp curls from his post-practice shower. He blocked the doorway with his arm held high and spoke very slowly, like he thought Richie might not be able to keep up if he went too fast. “We’re in New Hampshire. Why would the LAPD be banging on our door?”

“Dunno; dun’care.” Richie ducked his head, trying to peer inside and investigate the room, but Stan shifted over to prevent his eyeballs from wandering. “Can I come in? Or is Billy in his birthday suit?”

“I’m ruh-reading comics, you wuh-wet end,” Bill’s disembodied voice called out. “Stan, he has s-s-something for muh-me. Let him in.”

With a roll of his eyes Stan relented, stepping back and waving Richie into the room impatiently. Bill was already in pajamas, sprawled out belly-down on his bed and engrossed in a comic with one side of his headphones covering his left ear.

Stan’s level of dress was too formal for the hour and Richie couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “Wait, did you actually put your uniform back on after taking a shower?” Committed to playing it up as though nothing was wrong, he threw himself down onto Stan’s bed and added an insult for good measure. “What a friggin’ nerd.”

Ignoring the jab, Stan hovered stiffly in the middle of the room. “Why didn’t you just walk over and drop off Bill’s stuff at dinner?” 

“I dunno,” Richie said, although he knew well enough, and he figured Stan did, too. _Because I’m avoiding you, Stanley. Catch up._  “Too risky?” 

“It woudn’t have been too risky last week, when you still wanted to sit with us,” Stan said pointedly, hugging his front. He seemed perfectly calm but kept the posture of a ramrod. ”And for your information, I put my uniform back on because I had a late meeting with Coach Ryan and I didn’t think sweats were appropriate.” 

“A likely story.” Richie eyed Bill, eager to drag him into the conversation to neutralize the atom-bomb he felt materializing just underneath Stan’s cross-armed stance, but Bill was oblivious; the music coming out of his Walkman a scratchy bummer. No help there. “Was your meeting about how Eddie is way better than all the other wimpy douche-bags on the team?” 

"Our first game is on Sunday, it was--" Stan sighed and glanced up at the ceiling. “Whatever, don’t act like you care what the meeting was about. And you’re not funny.”

“Okay, fine. Uncle.” Richie took his glasses off and tossed them next to himself, rubbing roughly at his eyes. He’d already been in their room for longer than he’d planned and wanted to leave, stat. _May as well get this over with._ “What’d I do to you, huh Stan?” He slipped his glasses back on. “You’re acting like I took a shit in your corn flakes.”

“That’s a huge exaggeration,” Stan said quietly, deflating a little, dropping his arms at his sides. He wilted even more as he sat down on the edge of his bed beside Richie. “You didn’t really  _do_  anything.”

“Listen,” Richie started tentatively, softer than he meant to. “We can pretend that everything’s a-okay until we graduate. I’m totally fine with that, but I’m way better at that game than you. So just go ahead and tell me why you think I’m a shithead.”

Bill answered for Stan without looking away from his book. “He’s muh-m-mad because you’re a fluh-fl-flatleaver.” He pulled off his head phones and sat up on his knees to look at Richie. “Buh-but I just wanna s-say, for the record, that I’m gluh-glad you figured out that Eh-Eddie’s cool.” There was a practiced quality in the way he phrased it, as though he’d listened to Stan complaining about this for way too long and he’d stated his opinion more than once.

A light-bulb went off in Richie’s head. There was more to the story; it wasn't just a matter of his flakiness. He cuffed Stan one light jab on the shoulder. “Hold on, I thought you were mad on principle, but this is just a really long game of _I told you so,_ isn’t it?”

For the first time since Richie arrived, Stan smiled. “I do like to say _I told you so,_   but no.” He folded his hands and pushed them back and forth, cracking his knuckles. “Why do you suddenly like Eddie so much?”

Taken aback by the question, Richie hesitated, but only for a second. “I don’t know about _suddenly_ , it’s been— I mean, living together brings people closer, right? You and Billiam should know that better than anyone.” As soon as the words left Richie’s lips he wanted to go jump into the lake. He knew he fucked up with that comparison, because it sent Bill into a spiel.

“Leave muh-me out of it. I’m n-not the one who c-cuh-cares what you and Eddie d-d-do when you’re alone. He’s a gr-great center f-f-f—”

Stan held a hand up to silence Bill without taking his eyes off Richie. “Okay,” he said, grinning crookedly, maybe a little triumphantly. “Are you trying to say that you’re as close to Eddie as I am to Bill? Because that’s wh—”

“Why, surely, I haven’t run into Nosy-pants MacGuillicutty?” Richie asked, putting on his trusty Irish cop voice to push further away from the original question. He and Eddie weren’t anything like Bill and Stan. At least Richie wasn’t: he popped boners imagining the lunch lady’s tits. When he woke up the previous weekend in Eddie’s bed, with Eddie’s arm draped across his chest, the wood he sported down south was nothing more than the typical, average  _I-just-woke-up_ variety.  “I think young Eddie’s a foine lad is all. Interesting feller.”

Bill let loose a sharp bark of laughter and put his headphones back on, covering both ears and opting out of the rest of the conversation. He shot Richie a sarcastic thumbs up with a roll of his eyes, mouthing _Okay,_   before he focused back on his comic.

“Eddie must be _really_  interesting if you don’t have time to hang out with us anymore,” Stan hummed, hazel eyes still amused, though his tone had dampened. He wasn’t mad, Richie realized, but hurt.

“Stanley!” Richie dropped the cop act, barely containing his excitement as he hooked an arm around his friend’s neck. “Why didn’t you just say you miss me?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Stan griped, but he didn’t fight Richie’s half-embrace. “It just doesn’t feel nice to be ditched.”

He pulled his arm back, blinking down at his lap. “I didn’t wanna ditch you.” The conversation had taken a turn down the exact road that Richie wanted to avoid. Guilt. Shame. _Feelings_.  “It’s just that I never had a roommate I could have fun with before. At first I thought he was a little fucking dickhead but he’s actually kinda funny.”

“Well, maybe some afternoon you could both come hang out here. We kind of know Eddie too, y’know.”

“Yeah,” Richie said uneasily, “I guess.” It was a solution to the problem, but not one that he wanted to hop into. He liked it best when he and Eddie were one-on-one, and he didn’t want to get backed into a corner by Stanley, forced to start some new four-way study gang without thinking it through. “I should get back.” He stood up abruptly to make a swift exit, and his movement caught Bill’s attention.

“H-HEY WHAT ABOUT MY SN-SN—  CHOCOLATE?” He asked, too loud over the music pumping into his ears.

“Oh, duh.” Richie reached into his pocket to pull out two half-melted candy bars. He chucked them without waiting for Bill to be ready and they landed on the bed. “Stanley, I’ll think about it okay?” He ran a hand through his hair as he backed towards the door. “I gotta go, I have a phone call to make. It’s movie night.”

“You’re sneaking out?”

“Yup.”

“WHAT MUH-MOVIE?”

Richie grinned and cupped his hands around his mouth. “DUNNO YET.”

“Are you taking Eddie with you?”

“I dunno about that one yet either. Gotta ask him, which is why I shou—”

“Yeah, cool, whatever.” Stanley wasn’t over it, but he seemed less irritated than he had when Richie first knocked. “Y’know you and Eddie can come have lunch or breakfast with us, too. So can your other new friends.”

“Food for thought,” Richie said, only mildly mocking. He opened the door and left without a proper goodbye.

 

*** 

 

After a quick phone call to Beverly confirming their rendezvous time, Richie was surprised to find Eddie sitting up at his desk, wearing jeans and a fuzzy red sweater. The evenings after he had practice were early nights for him, and he tended to change into his pajamas right after dinner, studying on his bed until he passed out with open books surrounding him.

“Hey,” he said brightly as soon as Richie entered the room, turning in his chair. “How did it go?”

 _Honey, I’m home_ , Richie thought, giddy over Eddie’s warm welcome.  _He’s happy to see me._ But when he spoke, he went another direction. “It went,” he said noncommittally, whipping off his already open dress shirt. “I think Stan is still kinda ticked at me, but  _c’set la vie.”_   Kicking off his shoes, he peered at the mountain of books on Eddie’s desk. “Whatcha working on?”

“Ugh, Math.” Eddie groaned, wincing as he slid a hand up his forehead and into his fluffy hair. “Did you get everything when Smiley told us about converting to radians?”

“Yup, it’s real easy. Why, you didn’t?”

“I wasn’t paying attention. How do I convert 120 degrees?”

“It’s…” Scrunching up his nose for a minute, Richie worked it out. “…2pi over 3.”

Eddie’s lower lip puffed out as his eyebrows crimped together, clearly impressed. “Did you just do that in your head?”

“Yeah. Well, pi is 180 degrees, right? If the angle you’re converting is more than 90, you have to multiply pi by something. 2pi is 360, 3pi is 540…” He trailed off, because Eddie gave him a strange expression that he couldn’t read. “What?”

“Sorry, I don’t speak nerd.”

“You’re lucky I’m a nerd.” Chuckling, Richie walked over to the desk. “I’ll make you a thing.” He reached across Eddie to tear a blank piece of loose-leaf out of his binder. “Hope you’re better at memorization than you are at listening, otherwise this’ll be a bust.” He expected a good comeback, but Eddie was quiet as Richie bent over the desk, crowding the other boy’s personal space while he scribbled a circle that resembled a clock. He filled in the degree measures and their corresponding radian values. “My hand writing is shit, but here, this’ll help.”

“Thanks.”

“No prob, Bob.” Richie backed up, unable to stop himself from grinning at Eddie’s street clothes, and the way he sat in the chair with one bare foot curled on the underneath rung and the other flat on the seat with his knee bent.

“What?” He looked down at himself, wrapping one arm protectively around his upturned leg.

“Nothing.” Richie moved over to his dresser, pulling out beat up jeans and a dark hooded sweatshirt with a kangaroo pocket. “Just…usually you’re in your jammies by now, that’s all,” he said casually.

_I don’t pay super close attention to all your habits and your general state of being, really, I don’t, Eds._

“Oh. Yeah, I guess that’s true. I’m not all that tired; practice was easy today.”

Raising his eyebrows, Richie cocked his head. “Are you awake enough to go on an adventure?”

Eddie's lips curved up at the choice of phrase, but the smile blinked off his face a second later. “What kind of adventure can we go on? Lights out is in less than an hour.”

Richie unbuckled his belt and opened his pants, letting them drop to his feet. He stared unfocused up at the corner of the room, delivering a perfect, drawling impression. _“Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”_

Eyes pingponging off Richie’s boxers, Eddie scoffed, “Okay, Doc Brown.”

“Good catch, McFly.” He kicked his uniform pants aside and pulled on his jeans. “I’m sneakin’ out tonight, genius. If you wanna come with, you’re invited.”

“Oh my God, you’re not really gonna—” but then Eddie smirked, bobbling his head, the look on his face transparent to Richie: it said,   _Of course, you are; how silly of me._   “Where are you going?”

“To see a movie with Bev.” Richie pulled the hoodie over his head, knocking his glasses crooked. “And don’t ask  _which movie_.  It’s still TBD.” He bent to grab something Bev’d given him out of the pocket of his shed pants.

“If we get caught,” Eddie said slowly, talking more to himself than to Richie, eyes roving over the floor as his thought process panned out across his forehead in rippling wrinkles, “won’t I get like, kicked off the team or something?”

“I’ve snuck out like thirty times, Eds. Never been caught.” He plopped onto his bed and jammed his feet into his chucks, waiting for the final word with bated breath.

_C’mon, kid. Live a little, I’m beggin’ you._

When his mind was made up, Eddie’s jaw set and he replied firmly. “Fine. I’ll go with you.”

Both of Richie’s arms had a mind of their own. They raised over his head in celebration, and Eddie’s eyes widened as he yelled, “FUCKING EXCELLENT, EDS!” He brought them down quickly. Instant regret. Calling attention to themselves was ill advised.

“So...what do we have to do to get out?" His face was still thoughtful and somewhat uneasy but Eddie's voice didn't show it. "How are we gon—”

“Wait-wait-wait, I have a way more important question, quick before they make us turn out the lights.” He held up the item he’d pulled out of his pocket: a small black pencil. “Do you have any idea how to put on eyeliner?”

Eddie didn’t answer, because he started giggling and couldn’t stop. He covered his face with both hands, his chubby cheeks flushing as red as his sweater. “What— Wh— You wanna wea— Richie, I’m—” It was a solid attempt to speak as his giggles changed to full-on hysterics, but the kid was a goner, howling and wiping tears with his sleeve, nearly toppling out of his chair.

“Alright, enough,” Richie said sheepishly while his ears heated up. It was about the reaction he’d expected but living through it was more embarrassing than he pictured it. His voice shrunk smaller than a middle-schooler’s. “Bev told me it would look cool, okay? Perry Farrell wears it.”

Biting his bottom lip as his laughter tapered off, Eddie shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know who that is,” he said sweetly, and it sounded like an apology. “I don’t know anything about makeup, either…but I think maybe you just draw a line under your lashes?"

“Okay, but I can’t see anything without my glasses, so how am I supposed to—”

“I’ll help you put it on, if you really wanna wear it,” Eddie said unexpectedly, getting up from his chair. He came closer and sat sideways on the edge of Richie's bed with one leg tucked under himself. “I mean, I don't know how good it'll look, but— Here, take your glasses off.”

Richie did as he was told, making Eddie’s small form go blurry. He handed over the pencil, relinquishing control, but not without a warning. “Don’t poke me in the eye, or else.”

“Oh, I’m definitely gonna, now,” he deadpanned. “Quit squinting at me. Look up instead.”

“ ‘Kay.” The urge to squint was always reflexive when Richie didn’t have his glasses on, but the added desire to watch as Eddie’s eyes focused on his face felt impossible to resist. He looked up at the ceiling and battled with the squirmy itch inside his chest.

Eddie leaned closer and placed his left hand on Richie’s right shoulder to brace himself. He smelled faintly like apples and something else. Something citrusy.

 _Apples and Oranges,_ Richie thought dumbly,  _Paradoxicus maximus strikes again._

His right hand began applying the make-up, tickling softly in a line just under Richie’s left eye, murmuring, “You have really long eyelashes.”

Richie answered, but whatever came out might have been nonsense, he wasn’t sure. “Yeah, I’m gonna be real hairy, I bet.” He was struck with the sharpest stab of longing in the pit of his stomach; a need for Eddie’s warm hand to move six inches to the right and touch his neck. He saw it clearly in his mind: Eddie's thumb stroking the hollow of his throat; tear-drop lips inching towards his. Yammering like an idiot was the only thing that quelled the craving, and syllables just stumbled their way out of Richie's mouth. “Already am kinda hairy I guess but, y’know. More. Will be. Someday.”

“Turn your face to the left?”

There was a smile laced in Eddie’s words, and Richie wondered if the kid was laughing at him again; if he could sense Richie’s nervousness over their proximity. Or maybe Eddie was secretly a mutant who could read minds and he heard everything Richie was thinking all the time.

_Christ, I hope not._

All that stuff that Bill and Stan tried to say to him earlier—the stuff he’d trampled over with a dumb impression—started to make sense. They were telling him something that he already knew, in the gentlest way possible. 

“Earth to Richie.”

“Hmmn?”

“Turn your face, dipshit, I can’t do your other eye unless you—”

“Right. Sorry. I spaced out.” He moved his face the way Eddie directed him to and stared at the wall. The tickling resumed on his right eye and he kept quiet.

After a couple minutes, Eddie broke the silence. “I’m better at this than I thought.”

“Hidden talent?”

“May-be,” he hummed under his breath. His hand left Richie’s shoulder unceremoniously and the tickling stopped. “ ‘Kay, all done.”

“How’s it look?" Richie blinked rapidly and tucked his hair behind his ear. He felt more self-conscious than he thought he would and he wished they had a mirror in their room. "Stupid?”

There wasn’t any discerning emotion in Eddie’s reply, but it was obvious that he didn’t think Richie-in-makeup was a side-splitter anymore. “Bev was right; it does look cool.” His weight left the bed. He went over to his side of the room and opened one of his dresser drawers. “Do I need to change into dark clothes or something?”

“Uh, yeah.” Richie unfolded his glasses and put them on. “You don’t like,  _have to_ ,  but it’s probably a good idea.” Under Eddie's touch, a spell had taken him over and he felt it lift, like a veil that'd been covering his eyes was removed. A fluke. He shrugged it away and hopped up to collect supplies from his desk, stuffing them into his hoodie pocket. A wad of cash; glow in the dark _Swatch_ ;  smokes; lighter; fake ID.

“Are you gonna tell me what we have to do to get out of here?”

“We wait, Eds. Forty minutes past lights out, when the night monitor goes to the kitchen because he’s a fuckin’ slacker.”

“And then what?” he asked, voice crumbling out of nowhere, squeaky and just a fraction breathless. Not the cool customer he pretended to be at all; the kid was scared to break the rules and barely containing it, though he'd made a valiant effort so far.

In that moment it was solidified for Richie that the spell wasn’t broken or a fluke, that it wasn’t even a spell at all. He wanted to take Eddie into his arms and deliver soft, comforting reassurance, but he didn't dare. “Put your inhaler in your pocket now so you don’t forget it,” was all he said, just as the knock on the door came.

_“Lights out!”_


	7. You're not fooling anyone, Tozier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys sneak out to go to the movies. Eddie meets Bev.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: religiously based internalized homophobia, mentions of child abuse

The waiting was the hardest part. Forty-five minutes may as well have been nine years.

Eddie had settled on wearing a maroon sweatshirt because it was the darkest thing he owned, other than his uniform jacket. He sat rigidly on the edge of his bed and kept his hands stuffed into the front pockets, fingering absently over the trigger of his inhaler to ground himself. The glow from the hallway spilled under the door and a fraction of moonlight made its way through the small panes that lined the ceiling of the room, but his eye sockets were spread uncomfortably too wide, his pupils hunting on their own for a solid light source.

_It always takes me so long to fall asleep but I’m not nocturnal, not at all._

Richie’s hushed voice cut across the short space between them. “Do you get sleepy when you sit in the dark, Eds?” He was seated on the floor with his back against the side of his own bed, dicking around with that glowing watch, the sight of which sent a little pang of residual guilt knocking around in Eddie’s chest.

He hadn’t meant to laugh at Richie over the eyeliner. The raw humor of the situation, that Richie wanted to wear makeup to the movies like he thought he was David Bowie or whoever? It was just too much to handle.

_Cute. Not just funny, it was cute._

And if Eddie thought that was funny (cute), he really wasn’t prepared to learn that Richie owned a timepiece. Plastic and gaudy, it probably only cost about three dollars, but before they shut the light Richie had wrapped it around his bony wrist and wound it up all serious-like as he synchronized its time with the clock on the wall. The entire situation struck Eddie (who had been a habitual digital watch wearer since second grade and figured Richie the sort of person who cared very little about time) as completely hilarious (adorable), but he hadn’t broken up into another giggle fit—he couldn’t, because his insides were all twisted in knots made of Fear and Excitement.

Fear. Excitement. Fear. Excitement. Overlapping one another; over, under, around the tree. In each loop, Fear covered Excitement, tried to smother it. He wished they were already outside, running for the fence and smelling the dewy night grass. It would have been easier if Eddie had agreed to escape and they had broken out of their room straight away, the same way that it was better to rip off a band-aid quickly than to dilly dally with it, tearing it hair by hair.

“No,” Eddie said, surprising himself, because his voice didn’t waver at all. “I don’t get sleepy in the dark.”

Richie sighed, and it turned into a dramatic, body shuddering yawn. “Lucky you,” he muttered as he removed his glasses, an action that Eddie had seen enough times to know it usually had a specific follow-up.

“Don’t rub your eyes.” He scooted forward and lowered his butt to the floor, so they were sitting in the same position. “Eyeliner.”

“Right. Shit.” Richie slipped his glasses back on. “Well, fuck.”

“Tell me what we have to do to get out of here, again. Y’know, so you don’t fall asleep like a baby.”

“You’re just chock full of good ideas, huh?”

Richie’s sleepy voice rambled out the basics for the second time. _Escaping From Private School 101_ , but Eddie barely listened.

“When we hear the chair scrape that’s when we know to high tail.”

Every floor of every dorm had a monitor who was expected to stay stationed for two hours after lights out. In the dorms that housed younger boys, the monitors were adult faculty members equipped to deal with homesick criers or dinner-didn’t-sit-right pukers, but in their building the monitors were students, mostly seniors in good academic standing who used the time to read or study. Richie had scouted who their semester monitor was by pretending to desperately need the bathroom once or twice the first week, and said he knew the kid: Vic, a real slacker-type jitter bug who really shouldn’t have been trusted with the duty because he only took the position to get access to the kitchen late at night.

“He’s probably sitting out there right now dreaming about deep throating the sour pickles.”

They would exit their room, walk to end of the hallway past Vic’s empty chair and directly into the stairwell. It was four flights down to the laundry room. Each dorm building had tiny ground-level windows that could be accessed by standing on top of the dryers.

“Once we get to the laundry room it’s a slice of cake, Eds. I know you can run like the wind.”

“Yeah. Cool,” Eddie said softly, disconnected.

Simple, easy, cool, but a bad thing, breaking all the rules. A rebellion with deep roots grew in Eddie’s heart, one that no one else knew about. It began simply. He detached from his mother by ignoring her calls. Then the stakes were raised by his going out for a sport. From the outside it probably appeared like he was just being a normal kid. Too absentminded to keep up with anything that wasn’t right in front of his nose. Working off some of his energy running the bases. Getting involved to have something on his resume for college applications. But that wasn’t the whole story.

As far back as toddler days, during the tough ages when most children were stuck in some _terrible phase_ running their parents ragged and putting their sticky hands all over everything in sight, Eddie was praised for his decorum. Everyone called him well-behaved. He heard it from his mother’s church-lady friends, from all of his teachers, and from college-aged babysitters—on the rare occasion he was left with one, because his mother was so out-to-lunch she couldn’t bear the thought of being without him for an evening.

 _Well-behaved._   Perhaps it was true in theory, but the term didn’t quite fit. The more accurate description of his behavior was obedient. Eddie had always done exactly what was asked of him, and it wasn’t because he possessed some deeply ingrained moral code, it came from the process of trial and error. If Eddie wanted to live relatively conflict-free, he had to comply.

_Take this pill, Eddie! Don’t run, Eddie! You know that dust will play h-e-double-hockey-sticks with your allergies, Eddie! Baseball is DEADLY, Eddie! Pay attention in church, Eddie! Stay away from those heathen boys, Eddie!_

His mother quavered and quaked when he stepped one toe over the line. She embarrassed him in public, clutching at her bosom and wailing about her nerves, her sacrifice, Eddie’s health, his well-being, his dead father and all the squashed hopes and dreams his parents had imagined as a unit when the man still walked the Earth. Eddie did as he was told simply because it afforded him peace and quiet. Over time, it became second nature. In any given situation, he did whatever he thought his mother would want him to do, even when she wasn’t around. The fears she had about his health, his breathing, germs and disease, he absorbed them. Got married to them.

Brain-washed. Repressed. Programed. Well-behaved. Same difference.

Eddie had first learned about the concept of repression when he was nine years old. He was sitting on a hard, wooden pew in church on a humid Sunday morning that was no different than every other Sunday morning he had lived through, but it remained stark and hard-edged bright in his mind for years. If he closed his eyes tight, he saw the dust flecks floating in the blue and pink tinged sunlight that passed through the stained-glass windows. Smelled his mother’s Angel perfume mingling with her sweat.

The honorable reverend had delivered a stirring sermon about the power of prayer and the virtues of inner strength. He made it seem so simple: _impure thoughts can be banished if we don’t give them a home in our hearts._  He made it seem rewarding: _God will love you for this sacrifice._   He made it seem like it wasn’t a choice: _this is our Christian duty._

The difference between a pure thought and an impure thought eluded Eddie. He knew what was bad and what was good—at least he thought he knew. The message from the reverend felt like code that everyone else in the congregation had the key to unlock. He had glanced at his mother beside him, trying to find the answer on her face and in her actions. She listened to the impassioned speech with her eyes welling up and spilling, her head swiveling jerkily like a bobble toy in a car, agreeing with it all, eating it up, whispering,  “ _Amen.”_

Well-behaved, obedient little boy that he was, Eddie wanted to know which thoughts he should banish from his mind. Gripping his mother’s hand on the walk home, he had risked asking the question: _“Ma, how do I know what’s impure?”_

Never one to be forthcoming, his mother had dismissed him with vagueness disguised as life advice. _“Any thoughts that aren’t about minding your elders or school work or being a good boy are impure, Eddie-bear.”_  

Eddie had blinked down at his shiny black church shoes, and at the weeds growing out of the cracks in the sidewalk, pondering his mother’s explanation. By Sonia’s logic, if he had thoughts about how funny _The Real Ghostbusters_ cartoon was or thoughts about the curiously too-sweet chemical taste of pop tarts or even thoughts about the disgusting yet intriguing squishiness of earthworms…all of them: impure thoughts. He knew that couldn’t be the whole truth. At least that wasn’t what the reverend meant when he said _impure,_ because the man spat the word out as if it were poisonous.

With less than a decade worth of experience as a human, little Eddie knew one thing to be completely certain: his mother kept things from him on purpose. Maybe she was afraid that if he knew too much, he wouldn’t be quite so well-behaved—a fear that proved to be true, because the older Eddie got and the more he learned, the less he wanted to do things just to please her.

It wasn’t until several years later that Eddie fully understood the context of _impure._ Impure thoughts were the ones that cropped up when boys in little league patted him on the ass after a great play, the ones he forced out of his mind each time he entered the shower room and stared at the wall while he got clean as quickly as possible, the ones he had when he looked at Richie’s pale chest without a shirt covering it, and when he saw those long eyelashes up close and imagined what they would feel like fluttering against his cheek.

Banishing impure thoughts got easier as Eddie advanced in age, but a flash of remembrance of that morning and of his own naivety sometimes cropped up during quiet moments—moments like right now, sitting on the floor of a darkened dorm room and staring at the hazy outline of his habitually rule-breaking friend (yes, his friend, a boy he couldn’t stand the sight of two weeks ago) with the fingertips of his left hand somehow still warm from gripping onto that knobby shoulder, listening to the ticking clock as they waited for their moment.

Fear. Excitement. Fear. Excitement.

Eddie told himself that he didn’t want to be well-behaved any longer, to hell with being ashamed of impure thoughts, but sitting there quietly in the dark gave his obedient mind a chance to double down. He worried about the possibility of their getting caught—only an idiot wouldn’t—but also, underneath that, Eddie was scared of being given the freedom to run wild in the night. Along with that freedom came consequences that Richie probably never even considered.

Sonia’s voice had waited to poke its way into Eddie’s brain, but it was (almost always) there, mingling with his own fears, all shrill and insistent, reminding him that he’d catch a cold if he went gallivanting with no jacket, and then he would really be in for it. Bronchitis. Eventual concerned phone calls home from the school nurse. How could he? Why had he gotten sick? Wasn’t he taking his vitamins? He hadn’t been trusting strange boys, had he? Boys who could be leading him off somewhere dangerous or trying to pressure him into doing naughty things.

 _But Richie isn’t like that,_  Eddie thought, _That’s just prejudice. Pre-Judge._ _I prejudged_ _him_ , _the same way that Ma prejudges black people and unwed mothers and the man who works at the gas station squeegeeing windshields. I thought I knew exactly who he was five minutes after I met him, but I was totally wrong. Dead wrong._

They had grown closer inch by inch. Eddie wasn’t sure exactly when it started. Richie read comic books during baseball practice, but his eyes always peeked over when Eddie was up at bat, even though Stan insisted that he hated sports. He popped over to Eddie’s table for breakfast or lunch or dinner—sometimes all three in one day.  Ben and Mike didn’t comment on it, but they shot Eddie weird, smirky looks whenever Richie was present for meals.

Eddie had warmed up to Richie, though he was still the absolute definition of a skutch. He cracked jokes at the worst possible times. He repeated disgusting things after he was told (sometimes begged) to stop. He pushed teachers to their limit and was met with punishment eight times out of ten. But underneath all of that, there was more to him, things about him that Eddie saw crystal clearly. Richie seemed perpetually on the verge of death by boredom, because the school curriculum was too easy for him. Richie was incredibly lonely, because the majority of the boys at the school were either annoyed by or intimidated by his presence. Richie was the owner of a soft heart, and if he had the power to help someone, he did, while some other boys might have walked away or scoffed, _‘you’re on your own.’_           

The more Eddie got to know Richie, the more he wanted to know, and half of that curiosity was marked up on a chalkboard in his mind, filed under _impure._              

“Eds,” Richie whispered unexpectedly, his voice thick in the entirely silent dorm, “did you hear that?”

“No,” he whispered back, listening harder. “What was it?”

“The coast clearing.” Richie was on his feet in a flash. He turned the door handle slowly so the mechanism didn’t make a hint of a sound and pulled it halfway open with the knob still turned. Without looking back, he flicked the fingers of his other hand, motioning for Eddie to go into the hallway.

“But I—  Do I just—” he whispered, standing up hesitantly.  

Richie jerked his head towards Eddie. A complete change of pace, he was not joking at all. He mouthed: _GO,_ with crimped eyebrows and pleading, wide eyes, begging more than he was demanding it.

With a brisk nod, Eddie did what was asked of him. He crept out of the room and squinted in the brightness of the florescent lit hallway. Everything Richie told him before he stepped through the doorway might as well have been gibberish, because his mind went blank. He stood there frozen like a deer about to be plowed by a truck. When Richie exited the room (closing the door behind himself as quietly as he had opened it) and wordlessly gripped onto his hand, the warm spark that came with the contact somehow got Eddie’s feet to cooperate, and he followed along.

The trip ended up being as easy as Richie claimed. Hands still clasped, they took the empty staircase as low as it went. On the cement landing of the pitch-dark basement, Eddie stopped short and involuntarily squeezed Richie’s clammy hand tighter. It smelled safe down there, like fabric softener and the crackling furnace, but the idea of blindly waltzing in seized his heart. Anyone or any _thing_   could have been lurking in those shadows.

Richie squeezed his hand back one pump in response but didn’t let go, pulling him along. “You scared of the dark, Eds?” he whispered, finding his playfulness. “Think Freddy Kruger lives down here?”

“The only thing I’m scared of is walking face first into a beam,” Eddie shot back, lying through his teeth but hopefully stern enough for Richie to believe it.

“You won’t.” Richie led them around a corner and into the dim light that infiltrated the windows they were about to use as an exit. “See?”

Moonlight bounced off the shiny tops of the row of industrial dryers. Beside them was a table with clean piles of folded towels and undershirts. Richie let go of Eddie’s hand and grabbed one of the towels. He leaned stomach-first against a dryer and easily shimmied himself up on top of as quietly as he could. A couple hollow clunks—his knees banging into the aluminum—escaped into the night. The lock on the window clicked open. “This is it, kid,” Richie whispered, “we’re almost home free.”

“I dunno if I can—” Eddie stepped up to the dryer and placed his hands tentatively on the smooth edge. He doubted he could get up there on his own. Richie made it look easy but was taller than him by at least four inches. “There’s nowhere for me to grab.”

Richie held his hands out, palms up. “Grab onto me.”

Their sweaty hands met, and Richie leaned all his weight back, dragging Eddie up over the top of the dryer on his belly like a seal pup. Eddie scrambled to his feet and wriggled through the small window, into the chilly night. He stood there, a sitting duck with no coverage blocking the view from the windows of the dorm, loitering dumbly as he waited for Richie. The glow of the moon was much brighter outside. It cast his shadow parallel to the building, long and hulking like a cat burglar.

Slipping out of the window with well-practiced ease, Richie laid the towel in the right corner to ensure that it wouldn’t shut all the way before closing it over, then he shoved an immobilized Eddie away from the building, towards the shadows that made up the perimeter of the grounds. The stop-start song of crickets and the crunch of leaves under their feet were the only sounds as they walked in single-file along the fence.

Richie stopped Eddie with a bop on the shoulder. “This is the spot.”

There hadn’t been any reason for Eddie to be anywhere near the fence since he arrived at the school. It was taller than it looked from afar, easily three feet taller than Richie, with two flat crossbars on both the upper and the lower sections. Each vertical post was capped by a huge beveled spike that rose out of the top. A dangerous hunk of iron designed not only to keep people off school grounds, but to keep boys _in._  

_Eddie-bear you’ll break your arm._

Eddie glanced at the taller boy and the apprehension must have shown in his face.

“At least it doesn’t have barbed wire,” Richie whispered, barely vocalizing and exaggerating the movements of his mouth. “I’m gonna give ya a boost. Grab the flats on the top and kinda swing your foot up, okay? You have to pull yourself over but Bevvie will help you on the other side if you need it.”

“Is she even out there?” All Eddie saw beyond the fence was darkness, the woods. He thought about his nightmare, being chased into the night through the trees, lost and alone. Then his eyes registered a tiny flash. A dancing beam of light bobbing its way through the ebony stillness. A flashlight. Bev. “How are you gonna get up?“  

 “I’m a pro. Profesh. Are you ready?“

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said, and Richie’s hands were on his waist in a split-second, hefting him into the air with a little grunt. Eddie was grateful for the darkness, because Richie’s cool fingers slid under his sweatshirt and grazed the skin just above the waistband of his jeans. Blood pounded in his face, heating it up, but it could have been written off as the flush of exertion. He did exactly like Richie told him to and grabbed the flats while he frantically kicked one leg until his foot landed higher than his hands, then he used his quads and his back muscles to pull up, surprising himself, because it was easier than he thought it would be. Before he knew it, he was miraculously perched on the very top, crouched like a gargoyle with the bottoms of his sneakers resting in between the spikes. Eddie found a new reason to be thankful for the darkness: he couldn’t gage that he was approximately eight feet in the air because there wasn’t enough light to see the ground below.

“Gold stars; fuckin’ perfect ten,” Richie hissed up to him. “Now the dismount. Turn around and scale down it backwards.”

“Or you could swan dive into me and hope for the best,” another voice whispered.

Eddie’s eyes focused on the owner of the voice, a pale and spooky face that appeared to be floating, lit up from beneath like a grinning jack-o-lantern. He giggled without meaning to, imagining taking her on her word and diving head first off of the fence, using a girl he had never met to break his fall. Instead he swiveled, teetering only slightly, managing to turn himself around. He dipped one foot back and down, skidding it against the iron inch by inch as he curled his fingers around the spaces between the spikes. He followed suit with the other foot and continued the process, moving his hands to the second flat until he was hanging as low as he possibly could and dropped safely to the ground with nary a shin splint to speak of.

“Richie didn’t tell me he was roomies with Spiderman,” Bev whispered from behind him.

“Yeah, right.” Catching his breath, Eddie bent in half with his elbows on his knees and shook his head without looking at her. “I’ve never done anything like that before in my life.” He hadn’t, and the rush of it was different than the spike he got sliding into home to beat the tag. The danger, the darkness, the recklessness of it all. Exhilarating. Cleansing.

“You okay, Eds?” Richie hissed the question through the bars, checking up on Eddie before he started his own climb.

_He made sure I had my inhaler, too. But I don’t need it, Rich. Not now. I’m more than okay._

“Yep. It wasn’t so hard.”

“Cool. Hey, think fast?” Richie was a darkened blur, but Eddie saw his shoulder snap back and heard the whip sound as he tossed something over the fence.

Eddie caught the object easily. His glasses.

Richie didn’t waste any more time. He backed up a few paces and took a running start at the fence, jumping as high as he could and grabbing the flats at the top with both hands, then he swung one long leg like it was a pendulum until the arch of his chuck caught onto the upper most flat. It was like watching a spider tip over onto its back and scramble to right itself, though spiders didn’t wear hoodies that rode up, and they certainly didn’t have pale bellies that poked out underneath. Skinny dark limbs clawing and searching gracelessly, but despite the lack of finesse, Richie vaulted himself over the top and down the other side in less than half the time it had taken Eddie.

As soon as he landed and righted himself, Bev hugged him fiercely from behind. “Oof. Jeez Red, you miss me, or what?”

“Shut up.” She let go and Richie turned around.

He wrapped Bev up in a bear hug and lifted her, growling softly into her neck while she giggled.

Eddie focused on the tramped down grass beneath his feet. The easiness of their affection made him feel awkward, and if he was completely honest with himself, a little jealous. He couldn’t think of a single person alive who would greet him with such ferocity, not even his mother.

Richie walked a few feet away from the fence with Bev still in his arms. He set her down and said: “C’mon, Eds,” beckoning him closer with a curling finger, “let’s hoof it before we get pinched.”

“I’m Beverly, by the way.” Her face was heart-shaped and framed by red curls. She stuck out her small hand to shake.

“Eddie.” He walked over and accepted her offered hand, taking more of her in while they shook.

She wore a stealthy all-black outfit nearly identical to Richie’s, except her chucks were high-topped and zebra striped. The white parts of them glowed in the dark. She was short, shorter than Eddie, but her grip was strong and dry. No nervous sweat on those palms.

“Sorry if my hand is all sweaty,” Eddie mumbled as they both let go.

Her face lit up with a grin that sunk a tiny dimple on the left side of her mouth. “It was _really_  sweaty, but that’s okay. You just escaped prison.” She flicked on her flashlight and shined it directly into Richie’s face.

Richie blinked and flailed his arms around his head like he was warding off a swarm of bees. “Christ, I’m blind enough, doll, could’ya not?”

Bev rolled her eyes and lowered the beam of light until his arms stopped moving, settling for illuminating his throat. “I only trying to see if you weren’t too chicken to put it on.”

“Oh, right. How's it look?” He fluttered his lashes demurely, and Eddie had to look away. “Tell me I'm pretty, ma'am.”

“Dummy. It looks _okay.”_   Bev wedged the flashlight in between her thighs and reached up, using both her thumbs to swipe gently underneath each of Richie’s eyes, gliding them upwards at his temples. “You need to make it more smudgy next time,” she said, dismissive but fond, as if she were his older sister begrudgingly letting a compliment loose. “The line is too solid.” She stopped fussing over him after a minute, took the flashlight in hand and aimed it at the path into the woods. “Let’s get out of here before we miss a showing. I have a curfew.” She started walking back the way she came without bothering to check if they were following.

Richie stayed glued to the spot. “Ya hear that Eds?” he whispered so Bev couldn’t hear, “maybe you don’t have a hidden talent after all.”

“Guess I’ll scratch makeup artist off my career day list," Eddie said. He stuck out his tongue.

Then Richie did a curious thing. He held his hand out to Eddie, and Eddie’s heart leapt into his throat.

_Does he want to hold my hand again?_

“Listen, I know it’s darker than a witch’s tit out here but I kinda need those to see.”

_Oh. The glasses. Duh._

“Colder than a witch’s tit,” Eddie corrected as he handed them off. “Not darker. That’s the expression.”

“Hey, Red, wait up, Eds just told me he feels up witches in his spare time,” Richie called playfully, giggling and picking up his pace to a jog, narrowly escaping Eddie’s attempt to swat at him. “You got thermometer fingers, Eds?”

The patch of forest that bordered the school was shallower than it appeared from inside the fence. It only took the three of them a couple minutes of hiking through the dirt to get back to the paved roads of civilization. Eddie fell silent as they trudged along the storm gutters and squished through damp grass clippings. He checked out the neighborhood that he had only seen from the windows of his mother’s car on the first day of school. Large, antique homes with wraparound porches and sprawling manicured lawns. The more they walked, the smaller and closer together the houses got until the terrain changed. They came upon a quaint business district with sidewalks and old-fashioned street lamps.

Richie and Bev flanked Eddie on either side and shared a smoke, reaching behind his back to pass it. To Eddie, Richie almost always seemed like he was having a good time, even in the repressive environment of Saint Stan’s, but there was an added spring in his step on that cool autumn night. His curls bounced along with his cadence while he chatted amiably about business with Bev until she eyed Eddie guiltily.

“We’re being rude to your roomie,” she scolded Richie before smiling warmly at Eddie. “How do you like the school so far?”

“It’s okay. I went to public school until this year, so it’s pretty different.”

“Why’d your folks decide on boarding school, anyway?”

Eddie wished he knew an easy answer. No one back at school had asked him that, not even Mike and Ben, probably because it was a loaded question for all of them. _What did you do to make your parents want you to send you away?_  That kind of thinking opened a real can of worms. But he knew that Beverly was only being polite. “Uh, my mom got remarried? It was his idea to send me here.”

Richie exhaled sharply. His voice had a rough, accusatory note to it. “What is the dude like a scumbag or something?”

“No? I dunno.” Eddie wanted to talk about anything else.  “They just wanted their privacy, I guess.” He sighed and quickened his pace. “How far away is the movie theater?”

“A couple more blocks,” Richie said. He passed Bev the cigarette. “Y’know, Eds is a killer baseball player.” The compliment came from the ether and Eddie felt his knees go a bit wobbly. It was all he could do not to trip. _Richie Tozier: King of the uncomfortable subject change._

Beverly laughed on her exhale and almost choked on the cloud of smoke. “But I thought you hate sports.”

“He does hate them,” Eddie piped up, grinning at the way Richie’s neck jerked and snapped towards him.

“Oh, yeah?” Richie asked, voice cracking on the _yeah_. He looked instantly uncomfortable; a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. His normally pale cheeks were pink, but the flush could have been a gift from the temperature outside. “Says who?”

“Says Stan,” Eddie said, teasing, unable to resist. “He said you never watched practice a day in your life until this year.” The plain truth. Richie hated baseball but he watched Eddie play. Richie came back to their room earlier and earlier. There was an insinuation lurking just below those facts, and the full weight of that insinuation didn’t quite rest on Eddie. If he believed it, he would only end up disappointed.

Bev bit back a smile. Her warm eyes flitted back and forth between the two boys. She tapped at her cheek like she was trying to figure out a puzzle. “Wonder why the sudden interest.” They stopped at a crosswalk and she stamped the cigarette out on the curb.

Richie ignored her. “Don’t believe everything ole pissy pants tells you, Eds,” he said, referring to Stan. He scoffed and rapidly punched the button to light up the walk signal, adding, “Hate’s a really strong word,” with a sniff. “I think maybe I just never gave baseball a fair shake.”

“Sure, that must be it,” Bev said, all her attention focused on Richie. It didn’t sound like she believed him at all. She scrunched up her nose. “Hey, do you still want me to crash that thing next weekend?”

The change of subject brought back Richie’s confidence. “Course. It won’t be any fun if you don’t. I’ll sneak you over the fence.”

Eddie had no idea what they were talking about. “What thing next weekend?”

“Homecoming dance. Did you not see the gigantic sign on the bulletin board in the dining hall?”

“I must have missed it.”  

Eddie’s life fell into an easy routine at the school. Classes, rigid meal times, practice, studying, goofing around with Richie most evenings, chapel services on Sunday (a requirement for all students but Stanley, who told Eddie he was given the option to keep Saturday holy and use the chapel for his own private prayer service), and starting that weekend Eddie would add home games on Sundays and away games on Wednesdays to his list of obligations. Nearly every spare minute of his time was occupied, which was a good thing in theory, but it meant he didn’t really use the announcement board to find activities.

“You’re going to sneak Bev into school? But won’t they—”

“They bus in a gaggle of broads from our sister school every year. No one will notice.”

Girls. Dances. Boy-Girl dances, even at an all-boys school. Boys and girls danced together, and that was just the way of the world, wasn’t it? Eddie pondered it as they crossed the street. The previous summer, when he learned that his life was changing in the most abrupt way possible, a small part of him had hoped that the environment at St. Stan’s would help him unlock things about himself that he had previously shucked off and buried, claiming them unsuitable, wrong. _Impure._   Among four-hundred boys, there must have existed one or two who were gay. A Boy-Girl dance wasn’t the place to begin looking for them. Or maybe it was.

_Find the boy who looks the most uncomfortable, standing against the wall in the corner with panic stretched across his face. Oh wait, that’s me._

“Oh,” Eddie said. It was all he could muster up.

“Oh?” Richie parroted. He bumped his shoulder into Eddie’s. “You disappointed, Eds? Would you rather if they bussed in some broads from the old folks’ home?”

“You’re such a turd, sometimes,” Eddie said tiredly, and Beverly cackled, nearly doubling over when they hit the curb.

The movie theater couldn’t be missed. Eddie saw it from half a block away: a large brick building with at least four screens. A short line of people curled around the front end, waiting for their turns to purchase tickets. The titles of the films were displayed on the red and white awning.

_Basic Instinct. A League of Their Own. Encino Man. Reservoir Dogs._

As they joined the end of the line, Bev put in her bid for a movie choice. “Rich, we want to see Reservoir Dogs, right?” She directed the question at Richie but watched Eddie carefully. “It’s supposed to be really funny. And bloody.”

Eddie’s stomach did a cold flip and turned over. Just the word was enough. _Bloody._

“Funny and bloody: right up my alley,” Richie said before reaching out and poking the boniest part of Eddie’s elbow with his index finger. “What about you, slugger? Are you game?”

“What are you, my step-dad? Don’t call me slugger.” Eddie didn’t really care about the nickname. He was just avoiding asking: _“How bloody is bloody?”_  because no one wanted to be the squeamish little shit who ruined a fun time out. If he hadn’t tagged along, they could have seen any movie they wanted to. “I’m okay with whatever you guys want to see,” he said, as casually as possible. Shutting his eyes tight or sneaking off to the bathroom under the guise of having to urinate were always viable options.

“It’s rated R, though,” Bev said, her green eyes washing over Eddie’s face again. She didn’t need to say anything else. Eddie saw her sentiments in that pitying stare. _They’ll never let you in. You look like you’re in junior high._

“I know, that’s why I brought this bad boy.” Richie pulled a laminated card out of his hoodie pocket. “New Jersey driver’s licenses are really easy to fake. I’ll go up and buy the tickets. You two keep out of sight.”

They were the last people left outside when it was their turn at the box office. Eddie and Bev stayed out of eyeshot of the window. They stood with their backs against the brick building in a spot where they both saw Richie in profile as he approached the window.

Brimming with gusto, he slapped the fake driver’s license into the metal pay slot, crowing: “Why, hellooo Dolly,” to the person behind the glass—unable to help himself, Eddie could tell. That wild excitement that came along with being out and about surrounded him like an aura. “Three of the best seats in the house for Reservoir Dogs.”

There was a click-hiss and a tinny voice came out of the speaker box.  “Where are your friends?”

Richie’s shoulders dropped but he kept a poker face on, playing dumb. “My who?”

“Your friends,” the voice repeated, “the people you’re buying the tickets for.”

“Uh…” Richie kept his face forward but craned his eyes uneasily in Eddie’s direction. “They’re parking the car. What does it matter?”

“It matters because you don’t look old enough to be anyone’s guardian, honey.”

Eddie’s curiosity got the better of him and he leaned forward until he could see beyond the glass. The voice belonged to a woman with wiry, thinning hair that was dyed a brash orange hue. She was probably old enough to be his mother, but her eyesight must have been better than Sonia’s because she caught the movement in her periphery and her stare locked onto his face.

“Okay, I need to see his ID, too,” she told Richie, pointing Eddie’s way. “I don’t make the rules. I just enforce them.”

Richie shrunk in both stature and tone. “Oh, but he’s…He’s the same age as me.”

Unconvinced, she held up the phony license between two fingers. “This says you’re twenty-seven.” Her eyes narrowed at him. “What year were you born?”

“Uh, I was born in nineteen… sixty—”

“Nice try, kid. You and your friends can see one of the PG movies we’re showing. Take your pick: Encino Man or A League of Their Own.”

Giving up with a heavy sigh, Richie stubbed the toe of one chuck onto the dirty, gum-spotted cement beneath his feet. The need for pretense long gone, he turned his whole body to face his friends. “Encino Man?” he asked flatly.

“No,” Eddie said, asserting himself. He stepped all the way away from the wall, a little closer to Richie. “If we can’t see the one you guys want, I wanna see the baseball movie.”

Richie’s face melted into an easy grin. “You would. Is that cool, Red?”

Still leaning on the brick, Bev was unfazed, as if she totally expected something like this to happen. She lifted one shoulder to her ear and chewed gingerly at a pinky nail. “I was hoping for violence, but no skin off my ass.”

“Okay, fine.” Richie turned back to the clerk. “Three for Madonna’s Tits A-Go-Go, please and thank you.”

Eddie cringed at his use of _tits_ directed at an adult. But the woman was as unperturbed as Beverly, and possibly amused by Richie’s bravado. “The showing for that one already started, love, better get a move on if you want to see the previews.” She printed their tickets, mercifully returning Richie’s fake ID under the slot with them. “You were born in ‘65,” she said with a smirk. “Practice it.”

“Jeez, thanks a bunch.” Richie smiled gratefully at her before he handed the tickets off to his friends. His joy over pocketing that phony driver’s license practically oozed out of him. With a grandiose wave of his arms, he invited Bev and Eddie to walk ahead of him into the theater.

Beverly plodded forward through the doors into the red carpeted vestibule and beyond like she owned the place, securing herself a space on the busy line for the concession stand, but Eddie dawdled outside, eager to tease Richie over the fake ID debacle. “You can convert angles to radians in your head, but you can’t subtract twenty-seven from ninety-two?”

Richie wrapped an arm around Eddie’s shoulders, instantly warming him, smelling of smoke and the breeze. “Pobody’s nerfect, cept you, Mighty Mouse,” he declared, still teasing—Mighty Mouse, Slugger. New silly names to get annoyed by, but Eddie didn’t mind.

He was busy counting all the little touches Richie had thrown his way that evening. Some of them were practical: yanking him up onto the dryer and boosting him over the fence. The rest were not, like right now: Richie’s long arm stretched behind his neck, the two of them forming a too-wide hybrid human that clumsily shoved its way into the movie theater. Eddie could have huffily shrugged Richie off and said, _“Don’t call me Mighty Mouse!”_   --probably an expected reaction, but he just didn’t have it in him.

It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because Richie dropped his arm unceremoniously and cut into the line in front of Bev. He asked Eddie what kind of candy and soda he wanted (Juju Bees and Sprite) and paid for it along with his own (Sno-Caps and Dr. Pepper).

_He paid for my ticket, too, and he didn’t say anything about owesies or anything, not like I could pay him back, but still._

The theater was half empty. They picked the seats dead center. Richie sat in the middle and hogged Bev’s popcorn. Hunching low in his chair, he pushed the bottoms of his sneakers into the vacant seat in front of him, laughing like a maniac until his glasses fogged up at the funniest parts. Sitting still for two hours wasn’t in his nature and his elbow bumped into Eddie’s time and again. He leaned over to whisper questions about baseball into Eddie’s ear. It was annoying and endearing and distracting.

Despite Richie’s disruption of his focus, Eddie tried to engross himself in the movie. He liked it, it had a good message—baseball players facing adversity. They were girls—women—but he felt kinship with them. He owned their need to be taken seriously, because he knew what it was like to be judged based on how he looked. _Girly-boy! Couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a rake!_  But then when he stepped up to the plate and plowed a line drive everyone shut their mouths. A good feeling, shoving it down people’s throats, but it didn’t have to be that way if everyone stopped judging books by their covers. The way he had unfairly judged Richie.

During the last scene of the film, when the women were reunited and convened at the hall of fame and singing the anthem of their short-lived baseball career, Eddie thought he heard Richie sniffle. 

When the movie let out they hit the bathrooms and then convened at the mouth of the alley beside the theater, chatting about Gena Davis and Lori Petty. It was close to midnight when they said goodbye to Bev. She was already late for curfew. Richie put on a rough, body-guard voice and offered to walk her home, but she smiled wanly and said: _“This entire town is safer than where I used to live, sweetie,”_ before hugging both of them. She whispered: _“Save a dance for me next weekend,”_ into Eddie’s ear while they embraced. And then they both watched her disappear down the street.

Eddie’s curiosity got the better of him. “Where did she used to live?”

“With her dad.”

“Hmn.”

“She lives with her aunt and uncle now. I dunno the whole story but I think her dad was like, married to whiskey or something.”

Richie shook an ice cube into his mouth from the opened top of what was left of his soda. He crunched on it as he lit another cigarette. The pocket of his hoodie was all full of the leftovers from both his and Eddie’s candy, and it made him look like he had a beer belly. He shook his sleeve back and turned his wrist to consult his watch.

“Well, Eds. We aren’t safe to sneak back for another hour.”

“That’s super late. What are we supposed to do until then?”

“I usually kill time up on the roof,” Richie said. He took a drag and tipped his chin towards the fire escape hanging precariously off the side of the theater. “Sit up on the billboard. You can see the whole town from up there.”

Eddie eyed the hunk of metal. It had a bare iron ladder at the bottom and a similar ladder at the top, three short sets of stairs and three landings. On each landing there was faded spray-painting: scrawled tags and cartoon-block graffiti murals. The presence of the art told Eddie that at least a couple people had spent a considerable amount of time standing up there safely, but the whole damn thing had sporadic patches that were the exact shade of an oxidized penny. _Rusty. Who knows how old._  It was the type of structure his mother would refer to as a  _death-trap._   Her droning voice filled the spaces between his ears again, telling him as much.

 _Eddie-bear, I’m warning you: do NOT._    

He swallowed hard. “You expect me to climb up that thing?”

“Why not?” Richie pitched his half-finished cigarette into the gutter and took a gulp from his soda. “I do it all the time and I’m still standing.”

“But it’s not a residential building,” Eddie said, practically whispering, telling himself why it was a terrible idea, “so it’s probably not up to code and—"

“It’s safe, kid. Go up ahead of me. I won’t let you fall.” Richie said it with conviction, like it was a promise he could make that easily. He held out his free hand with the pinky turned up. “Swear.”

Eddie licked his lips. He took one last look at the fire escape. Then he looked back at Richie’s face (at that smudged eyeliner beneath his eyes that made him look equal parts sincere and pretty and haunted) and believed every word that came out of his mouth. Richie wouldn’t let him fall. He curled his pinky around Richie’s offered one and tugged. “Fine.” He let go. “But if I get tetanus from touching that ladder, my mother will come up to the school and murder you in cold blood.”

Richie grinned. “Hot.”

They made their way up to the roof without incident. Richie was right, the rungs of the ladder were solid—just as solid and cool and hard as the fence Eddie had easily scaled a couple hours before. A few creaks here and there on the metal steps, but nothing Earth splitting. On each landing Eddie got a mild sensation of vertigo, but it felt like someone planted it inside him. He wasn’t really afraid of heights in the first place. He was afraid of consequences. 

“The clouds were busy while we were in there. No stars tonight,” Richie mused as he sat down cross-legged on the wooden ledge of the billboard. “Bummer.”

Eddie sat beside him in the same position. “What if it rains?”

“We’ll get wet?”

“Great.”

“It’s nice out, though,” Richie said, adding: “It’s nice  _to be_   out, no? Out of that place.” 

Up there on the roof, the breeze was stronger. It whipped Eddie’s short hair and made Richie’s curls dance the tango. The unmistakable scent of burning fireplaces wafted up from the small homes nestled around the main street, mingling with the cloying aroma of buttered popcorn. 

_Bummer about the stars, you’re right, but it’s bright. Pretty anyhow._

Eddie inhaled the dry air, tasting autumn. “Yeah,” he said. “It is nice.” They fell into a comfortable silence for a few minutes.

Richie opened his mouth and closed it several times before he spoke. “Eds, can I ask you something?”

“Uh huh.”

He huffed a little breath and curled his fingers tighter around the cup in his hands. Whatever he wanted to ask, it wasn’t coming out easily. He sucked his teeth and tipped his face up to the hazy sky. “Do you think Bev is pretty?”

“Oh.” The question came as a shock. Eddie didn’t know what he had expected Richie to ask him, but it definitely wasn’t that. “Uh, yeah, she’s pretty. Her eyes are really—” He paused and worried at his lower lip. “I’d like to have eyes that color,” he said finally, rolling his brown ones midway through the sentence, because it was a silly answer. He knew damn well what Richie asked of him. A question that had been posed to him before by other boys about other girls in differing capacities. Did he  _like_ Bev? Would he get sweaty with her in the backseat of a Pontiac?

“No,” Richie said gently, almost apologetically, “I meant, like, would you ask her on a date?”

Eddie evaded without lying. “I don’t really ask anyone on dates.”

“Oh right, you’re a jock.” Richie grinned and knuckled a series of light jabs on Eddie’s shoulder. “What do you just offer them your letterman jacket and they fall to their knees?”

“Shut up,” Eddie said, laughing and slapping Richie’s hand away. “I’m not a jock; I just like playing baseball.”

“You’re more of a jock than I’ll ever be.”

“Yeah, well, you’re more of a book-nerd than I’ll ever be.”

Richie’s mouth dropped open. “Totally rude. And way to change the subject.”

“What do you care if I think she’s pretty, Richie?”

“Just curious, Eds.” He stuck his hand into his cup to fish out a piece of ice, muttering: “It’s too late for there to be any targets down there,” before tossing it over the railing in front of them.

Eddie listened for the hollow sound of the cube hitting the pavement below, but the hum of the billboard’s florescent light was too loud. He watched Richie in profile, paying attention to the way his glasses sat unsettled on the bridge of his long nose, just waiting for their opportunity to slip down the slope of it. Dark eyelashes brushing against the underside of thick lenses (Eddie wanted to reach over and remove them, to let those lashes fan free). His two front teeth, sticking out from slightly parted lips, too big for his mouth and still with their wavy ridges on the bottom as if they had sprouted yesterday. The whole of Richie didn’t fit: too big glasses, too long limbs, too loud for prep school, too wild be kept still. Gangly and a little goofy, but cute all the same.

_I think you’re pretty, Richie. Bev’s alright. Not my cup of tea._

Richie caught Eddie looking at him. “Whatcha starin’ at, creep?”

“You,” he said simply, not caring to elaborate. He leaned forward as far as he dared and tried to count the black gum splats on the sidewalk, because it prevented him from staring.

“Tell me a secret,” Richie said without warning, an odd request that made Eddie’s teeth clench.

“Uh, what do you mean?”

“You’ve heard of secrets, right? Things no one else knows?”

“Yeah dipshit, obviously I know what a secret is. I’m just—” Eddie sat back and folded his hands in his lap. “What kind of secret do you want to know?”

Richie sighed. “Do you want me to tell you one of mine first? That way you won’t like, confess to a murder and then I go ‘oh dang, well one time I stole a pack of Starbursts.’ “

Eddie giggled down at his fingers. “I never murdered anyone.”

“Good. Good deal. Me neither.”

“Richie, are you gonna tell me a secret, or what?” 

 “Yeaahh, let’s see… uh, I tell people that my first kiss was with the lifeguard at the public pool when I was fourteen,” Richie said, cadence bobbing like he was asking a question, “two summers ago? And that she also let me feel her tits?” He bit down on his lip and chuckled before his voice went flat. “But I really never kissed anyone at all.”

Eddie grinned and shook his head. He couldn’t imagine himself making up a lie like that about anyone. “I’ve never kissed anybody either,” he admitted, killing two birds with one stone: trying to make Richie feel better about being a loser and telling a secret of his own.

“Okay, now you tell me a secret.”

“I just did.”

“Nuh-uh, you can’t pick the same exact secret as me.”

“It’s not the same. I didn’t make up a story about a kiss; I just never kissed anyone. They’re two different things.”

“Cheater,” Richie said breezily, like he was declaring he had Uno, “Rat Fink.”

“Jesus, you’re so annoying.” Eddie tucked his knees up and hugged them. “Fuck it. Fine. Remember how you told me I didn’t need to take baseball practice so seriously? When I hurt my leg?”

Richie’s brow furrowed, and he gave his glasses a sharp push with his index finger. “Uh huh.”

“I go hard in practice because—” Eddie sighed, searching for the right words. Words that wouldn’t make him sound quite as crazy as the reality of the situation made him feel. “My mom, she forced me to quit little league because she didn’t want me to get hurt? But I don’t really mind being hurt. Sometimes I like to see how much I can take.” He scrunched up his nose. “Running into someone’s shoulder, or getting a bruised ass taking a dive to land on home plate…it hurts but it makes me feel alive, too, y’know? Getting knocked around.”

Richie listened to Eddie with that serious look still on his face, eyes focused and mouth pouty. He nodded, and his lips parted but then he blinked fast and didn’t say anything.

“I should have told you a different secret.”

“You have more? That one was pretty gnarly in my opinion.”

“Tell me another one of yours.”

“I spit in your shoe,” Richie blurted and then clenched his eyes shut, as though he thought Eddie might deck him in the face.

But Eddie tilted his head like a puppy, not fully processing the information. “You did what?”

Richie opened one eye. “I hawked a lunger into your shoe because you were a mean jerk to me when I was trying to take your mind off’a being sad—missing home or whatever—your first night. But I would never do anything like that to you now.”

“Richie, that’s really fucking gross.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“S’okay. I _was_  a jerk. And I didn’t even fucking notice that you—” Eddie stopped and stared at the empty roof across the street, the darkened houses in the distance, the tops of the trees in the patchy forest they’d hiked through, suddenly aware of how totally alone they were up there, both being painfully honest. He wanted to tell Richie a really _real_   secret. A take-it-to-the-grave type of secret, and the anticipation sent a wave of nausea crashing against the lining of his gut. _Impure,_ Eddie thought. _But how can something that feels so natural be wrong?_  “Richie, I wanna tell you something, and you can’t repeat it to anyone. Promise.”

Richie’s lips curled into an open-mouthed grin, like he was about to let loose a really dumb joke, but he snapped his jaw closed and dragged a finger in an X over his abdomen instead: shoulder to waist and shoulder to waist. “Cross my heart.”

Nodding, Eddie began speaking quickly, before he chickened out. “I think Bev is a pretty girl,” he said, hoping that it was enough to get the point across, “but I wouldn’t ever want to date her. Or even kiss her. Ever.” _Gay,_ he thought, _I’m gay, but I’ve never said it out loud or even hinted at it to anyone before and if you act weird about it I don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do._

“How come?” Richie scrunched up one eye. “Because you think she has like, mouth herpes or something?”

“ _Richie. No!”_ Eddie smacked himself over the eyes with both hands and held them there. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Richie snorted. “It was a joke, Eds.” His voice softened. “I think I get what you meant, though.”

Eddie stopped hiding behind his fingers. He dropped his hands onto the tops of his knees. “You do?”

“Yeah, I do.” If Richie had an opinion on the matter, he kept it to himself. He licked his lips and turned his whole body, so he was facing Eddie. “Maybe this is a stupid question, but how’d you know for sure?”

“It feels like I’ve always known,” Eddie said quietly. He searched his mind for the exact moment when he realized it, but he thought perhaps there wasn’t one to speak of. It could have been when he wanted to hold hands with Davie Thomas in first grade, or when he had a crush on the cartoon version of Egon Spengler, but everyone felt things like that sometimes, didn't they? “I was really little when I figured it out, that's all I know.”

“Do you think your parents know?”

“It’s just my mom. My stepfather isn’t my—” _Dad. He’ll never be my dad._ “No, she doesn’t know. I mean, do you think my mother would have sent me to an all-boys school if she knew that?”

“I dunno. Depends if she’s cool, I guess.”

“She’s not,” Eddie whispered. He closed his eyes and saw clearly his mother’s hands clenching around her pearls and the sunlight lighting up the wet, baby-fine hairs on her cheek. Crying for salvation. For her son’s salvation. “She’s not even a little bit cool.”

Richie hummed in response. There was no follow up, no joke, no insinuation that he wanted to sleep with her, _“Eds, she’ll be real cool with her nightie laying on my floor, know what I mean?”_   nothing. He sat there, holding his half-melted ice cup and looking up at the sky, his freckled face a bit pensive. Contemplative. Maybe sad.

Eddie whispered his fear before he thought better of it: “Richie, do you think I’m weird?”

“Sure do.” His magnified eyes locked onto Eddie’s and he grinned, those big teeth biting down on his lip. “But not because of what you just told me, Eds.”

Laughing thinly in relief, Eddie dropped his knees from in front of himself. He leaned against the poster of the billboard behind him, stretching his legs out long and relaxed, feeling approximately thirty pounds lighter. “Lemme get the rest of my Jujy Fruits.”

They ate their leftover candy until they both wanted to puke. Richie shifted over and pressed his back against the billboard, his upper arm comfortably flush against Eddie's. He started yammering about the upcoming dance and was really cryptic about some money-making scheme he had cooking for it, all the profits of which were to be added directly to the bleacher fund. The wind picked up speed as the night grew longer. Eddie thought if he stood up and went too close to the edge he would be swept away like a weather balloon, but if he stayed put, snug against Richie’s shoulder, he was safe as houses. He couldn't think of another place he would rather be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lil note that a skutch is an annoying person. it's slang that my mom used and idk if it's like universal or whatever ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ sorry for the long ass delay with this chapter! hope you're still out there! thank you for reading, and for your support ily all


	8. He can-not, he can-not, he can-not suh-wing battah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first home game of the baseball season.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: i updated the tags, check them out

“Crushed pineapple, Eds?” Richie tried his best not to sound disgusted, but it was way too early for false pleasantries. And watching as Eddie scooped canned yellow glop onto an otherwise beautiful Belgian waffle pained him deep in his heart. "That should be illegal." 

For the most part, Sunday mornings sucked. Almost the entire school was forced to wear their uniforms to breakfast, so they would be prepared for chapel services right after. But there were bright spots sometimes, one such beacon of hope being build-your-own-waffle day. Using it as an opportunity to eat dessert for breakfast was a no-brainer in Richie’s book.

With a little pout, Eddie shrugged as he set the serving spoon back into the buffet dish. “I have to be able to run later.” He slid his tray along the counter in rhythm with the other boys in line, passing right by the best toppings available (chocolate sauce and candied pecan halves) without a second look. “If my stomach is all full of butter and syrup and sugar—” His expression changed abruptly, like he’d just tasted a lemon. “I don’t want to puke all over the diamond,” he explained, his face still pinched, “or get a stitch in my side or something.”

Richie yanked his eyes away from those bunched up chubby cheeks on the double. “Smart thinkin’ .” He set to loading up his own waffle with toppings: the chocolate and pecans of course, plus a mound each of butter and whipped cream for the hell of it. It wasn’t a task that required his full attention at all, but he laser-focused on it, eager to have something else to look at.

Since their night out on the town, Richie found himself pretending to be interested in anything other than his roommate’s face a whole hell of a lot more. It was completely silly, because nothing had changed at all. Not really.

So he took Eddie to the roof and went fishing for information until he pulled back a live one, so what? He got the exact answer he expected. Eddie was as gay as he was cute. In a word: completely. But what could Richie do with that information now that he knew? Other than staring like an idiot and inserting meaning into every little twitch of Eddie’s nose and suddenly being nervous to say the wrong thing, as if he ever gave a fuck about that before in his life.

Their night of freedom, the jailbreak, the whispers in the darkness of the theater, the secret session up on the roof. If Eddie were a girl, Richie would have no trouble calling what they did that night what it felt like.

 _A date. It felt like a date. My first date._  

Not a date in the stricter sense. Not a  _date_ -date, like the movies sold them. There was no hand holding in the theater. Their buttery fingers didn’t brush and tingle over the popcorn tub. They didn’t kiss goodnight. Richie wasn’t given the chance to part ways with Eddie, go home and contemplate it all alone. He had laid in the darkness after they snuck back into their room, listening to Eddie’s breathing as it slowed and evened out, unable to shut off his own mind, telepathically asking his pillow the burning questions.

Question. Singular. The same question he had asked Eddie up there on the roof. The question he really needed to ask himself.

_“How’d you know for sure?”_

_How do_  I _know for sure?_

It was a question that Richie had avoided since puberty body-slammed him the summer after eighth grade. He wasn’t completely dense. He knew that he noticed boys the same way that he noticed girls. Not every single boy, but some. Enough. And for a long time, he thought maybe he was some kind of freak of nature. It was easier to ignore it than to make sense of it. He became an expert at turning his back on his own feelings, and he’d done it for so long that he didn’t know what the truth was anymore. 

_If I do… if I like... if I am, y’know… like Eddie… what the fuck am I supposed to do about it?_

Was he supposed to grab Eddie by the shoulders and say:  _“Hey, me too Spaghetti Head, half-way at least. High five! Also, wanna make out?”_

No. That would be stupid. Because Eddie wouldn’t even like a guy like Richie, anyway. Eddie probably preferred boys who were patient and kind. Boys who knew how and when to shut the fuck up, like Mike. Or maybe he liked boys who were more serious, ones that valued clean laundry and order, like Stanley. Or boys who actually cared about shit and wanted to change things for the better, like Ben. Or boys who were natural leaders, the type of guys that didn’t need to say a whole hell of a lot to get respect, like Billy.

“Move it Tozier; you’re holding everyone up.”

Richie turned his head to the left. The faces of the boys behind him in line blended together, staring, some of them whispering, grinning. He looked to the right, where Eddie was loitering, waiting patiently for him at the end of the buffet table with a mildly concerned crinkle in his brow.

Grabbing his tray, he mumbled: “Sorry,” over his shoulder. His brain was fresh out of smart comebacks for random underclassmen.

“You okay?” Eddie was still giving him that appraising look. “You’ve been weird since—”

“Since I found out there was no Santie Claus when I was five,” Richie broke in confidently, turning it into a joke. “It scarred me for life, Eds.” He didn’t need to hear Eddie say it out loud, that he had been acting like a tremendous nerd since Friday night. He knew, and was trying his best to keep it at bay.

They crossed the bustling hall together, maneuvering their trays past chatting boys who weren’t settled yet. 

“Are  _you_   okay?” Richie cautioned, looking at Eddie sidelong. “Nervous? About today?”

Eddie blinked rapidly and licked his lips.  “A little,” he admitted, the subject of Richie’s behavior dropped. “Stan and Bill put me as the lead-off hitter.”

“I don’t know what that means. Is that good?”

“It means I’m first in the batting order.” Eddie set his tray down on their table and pulled out his chair. “I guess it’s good,” he mused as he sat down, “it means they trust that I can get onto a base. That and run fast.”

Taking the seat beside Eddie, the chair that was quickly becoming his usual spot, Richie parked and pondered.  _My new usual,_  he thought, just as Ben and Mike arrived and claimed their respective seats. The two of them started in immediately with good-natured teasing about Eddie's first game. They were all going to be there in the stands later. His own personal cheering section. 

A mildly guilty flutter tickled Richie behind his naval. He would attend his very first Blazers baseball game later that day, but not to support his oldest friends. As he cut into his waffle, he glanced across the crowded hall for a peek at Stan and Bill, who were already seated with their heads bent over their shared play book, and his guilt diminished somewhat. They were too busy to even notice he was gone. That was Richie’s  _old usual_   on Sundays during baseball season. Solitary, and only half by choice.

Stan and Bill were nearly unreachable those mornings, muttering to each other and making last minute changes. They said on more than one occasion that Coach Ryan was a complete joke. The team required an adult liaison and Ryan had drawn the short straw in a staff meeting a few years prior.  He let the captain and co-captain run the team simply because he didn’t know what he was talking about half the time.

 _“He lets you run the team… into the ground!”_ Richie would sometimes retort, completely senselessly, because he had no knowledge to gage if they ran it well or not. He never attended any of the games. He knew next to nothing about the sport itself. He knew that their team didn’t win very often, and that Stan and Bill didn’t need or appreciate his cracking wise at their table on Sunday mornings.  

Richie’s  _old usual_   Sunday routine was existing as a third wheel at breakfast and a hazy-brained zombie during chapel services. He always retired to his room shortly after church to spend the lengthy afternoon playing catch-up on all the school work he ignored during the week. Most kids knew better than to come knocking on his door with contraband order requests during those hours. If they were too thick to figure it out on their own, he brushed them off:   _“Even God took a day off, compadre. Sucks to be you.”_     

But he knew that day was going to be different from the moment he opened his eyes. In a few short hours he would get to watch Eddie kick ass and take names on the baseball diamond. And he wasn’t just excited about it. He was  _stoked._

When he stopped to really think about it all, he felt kind of foolish, because he had spent years shitting on athletics. Pointless dumb baby games that had the power to make grown-ass men cry. His father had tried to get him into them at a young age, signing him up for tee ball and flag football when he was six. That was the same year he learned that he needed glasses. The year he found out that comics and comedy were more his speed than activities that involved hand-eye coordination. The year he began cultivating an attitude within himself that he didn’t fully understand the scope of until the fateful evening he heard Lisa Simpson answer the question: “ _What are you rebelling against?”_   with   _“What’ve you got?”_  

_Baseball still totally sucks a rusty tailpipe, but Eddie doesn’t. He likes it and he’s good at it and I’m gonna scream my ass off at that game._

“Jeez Richie, did you put enough syrup on that thing?” 

“Huh?” Richie must have looked like he was in la-la land, judging by the way Ben was smiling from across the table. 

“Were you trying to make a model of Mount Everest out of pecans and butter?” Ben asked, still smiling. His own waffle was less dressed. Fresh strawberries and sliced bananas with a couple modest dollops of whipped cream.

“Y’know what, Benny? I wanted more, but the vultures in line were rushing me.” Richie nudged his chin towards Mike’s tray. “Mikey’s with me at least.”

“Mmm-hmmn.” Mike grinned through a mouthful. Chocolate and banana and peanut butter were generously slathered on his waffle. He swallowed and reached across the table to bump fists with Richie. “The only logical choice.”

“Whatever,” Ben dismissed them affably, “I’m trying to eat healthy.” He moved his eyes to Eddie. “That’s all you’re gonna eat?”

Richie looked at his roommate just in time to see him pushing his tray to the center of the table. Barely a quarter of his waffle was gone. “Something wrong with yours, Eds?” He took a gigantic chocolatey bite and slurred: “Or’s-it just because you realized that pineapple is gross as hell?”

It seemed like Eddie was trying to be cross, but his words came out with all the bite of a dying mosquito. “Richie, I already told you that this is what I wanted on it. And I don’t think it’s gross.” He placed a hand over his tummy and sighed a tight exhale. “I’m just not hungry anymore.”

 _Liar._  

The actions didn’t match the words, and all of it was a little too much for Richie to witness. He didn’t like the idea of Eddie being too keyed up to enjoy his breakfast, even if it was—in Richie’s limited opinion—a totally shitty, waste of time, ruined-waffle excuse of a breakfast. Dropping the teasing, he reached for Eddie’s unopened milk carton and set to work peeling the top back for him. “If you don’t wanna eat you should drink all your milk, at least.”

Mike laughed and put down his fork. “What are you his mom?” 

Richie felt the flush rushing past his cheeks to the tips of his ears, felt both Ben and Mike’s eyes watching him.  _Can they tell? Fuck._ He lifted one hand briefly to push up on his glasses. “Excuse me for not wanting the kid to pass out during his first game,” he muttered, completing the task and setting the milk down in front of Eddie. 

Eddie was staring at Richie’s face along with the other two boys, giving him that same look from before. That ‘ _you’ve been weird since—’_ frown. “Thanks,” was all he said. He drank a deep swallow from the carton and changed the subject to Stan’s proposed offensive strategies. 

 

*

 

It was a decently warm day for early October and the bleachers were more than half full. They chose the seats top-center, where they could see everything. Richie's usual spot when he sat there alone. He was surprised by how many boys turned up to watch the game. An overwhelmingly underclassmen crowd, which made sense. Seniors and juniors tended to go off campus every chance they got.

Most Sundays right after chapel, streams of guys flooded out the front gates of the school and headed in all different directions. Matinée movies, the mall, the diner, and when the weather was nice enough, the park. Richie knew at least a couple people went to the woods to smoke weed. He might have tried tagging along, if he wasn’t perpetually on restriction.

“These bleachers are a total embarrassment,” Ben said bitterly. “They were obviously built back in the dark ages when the school only had a hundred students enrolled.” He looked like a mildly ferocious baby bear when he threw his hands out towards the opposing team’s bench. “And there’s no visitor’s seating, at all.”

The visiting team for the first game of the season (Lincoln, a public school from the next district over) brought with them a group of high-energy cheerleaders complete with a goofy bulldog mascot, a small section of their marching band, and a few spectators. They must have known from experience that the seating situation at Saint Stan’s was terrible, because most of them came prepared. Anyone who wasn’t a player on the team was armed with either blankets, folding beach chairs or towels to sit on.

“If I had my way,” Ben continued, crossing his arms over his broad chest, “we’d build home  _and_   visiting bleachers that could hold five-hundred people each.”

Mike chuckled and reached behind Richie to poke Ben in the side. “You couldn’t get a thousand people to show up to a game here if you were giving out gold-plated honey buns, Benny.”

“Plus it would take a lot of bread,” Richie said absently.

He had made a promise to finance his new friend’s passion project, but he wasn’t itching to blow his entire wad, even though Ben was right. Richie spent so much time seated on the bleachers all alone that he never noticed how rickety they were. His solo weight barely registered. With Ben to his left, Mike to his right and a thin crowd fanned out in front of them, the wood seemed to creak and groan with every breath. And putting aside the prehistoric hunk of junk's status as a flimsy eyesore, it was also inadequate to hold all the spectators that wanted to be there.

In the sea of green on the opposite side of the baseball diamond, a bunch of co-ed kids made up a tiny lake of blue and gold, camped on the ground like they were at a music festival. The cheerleaders were spelling out unintelligible words as they warmed up with high-kicks and a flurry of pompoms. Their band was standing, stumbling through a barely recognizable rendition of   _Simply Irresistible._  An assault on the ears, but Richie supposed that mediocre musicians were way more interesting than Saint Stan's complete lack of a spirit squad.

A couple freshmen seated directly in front of Richie two rows down were elbowing each other, either ogling the cheerleaders or maybe the chunky tuba player with enormous breasts. Richie hardly registered any of it. He was too focused on the home team’s huddle.

Stan and Bill were giving what appeared to be a pep talk to the other boys while the coach was off on his own, drinking kool-aid and twiddling his thumbs. Bill bellowed something, and though Richie couldn’t make out the words, he knew one thing: whatever Bill said, he was able to get it all out without stuttering.

The team responded to the chant, slapping hands in the middle and raising them, bearing a resemblance to an octopus—a maroon and pinstriped octopus, with way too many arms. Eddie was lost somewhere in the core of the mass, his shorter stature hidden by some of the six-footer seniors.

Ben watched the team’s camaraderie along with Richie, but his mind was clearly meandering down a track with one lane. “I figured out that the materials to build two sixteen-feet wide, four-tier bleachers will cost about seven hundred,” he said casually as the huddle broke and Eddie appeared from within its confines.

Richie didn’t take his eyes off Eddie, who was shoulder deep in the box of mitts, picking one out. He pushed his glasses higher on his nose. “Why two bleachers?”

“Because this one is double sided.” Ben turned around in his seat to look down the back of the structure. The thing was built like a pyramid. One side faced the baseball diamond and the other faced the empty soccer field. “We would have to build two to replace this one. I think it would be better to build _four;_   home and visiting for each field.”

 _“Four?_   Fourteen-hundred bucks?” Richie winced at the expense, though he had the money. Socked away in a cigar box inside his desk drawer was a cool three grand and growing. The fruits of sixteen months’ worth of schemes and sales, not counting all his expenses and whatever cash he blew on dumb stuff for shits and giggles. “I could swing that, but we still need a cover.”

“A cover,” Mike repeated, watching the field, where the home team was finding their positions and tossing the ball back and forth. “Your super-hip lingo is going right over my head, Rich.”

“An influx of cash, Mikey,” Richie said impatiently. He didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He wanted to watch the team.

Out on the diamond, Bill threw practice pitches to the catcher. Eddie looked a little out of place standing on second base, pounding his fist into a patchy glove the color of an olive and chattering to Stan, who was stretching out his knees with side lunges halfway between second and third.

“It can’t look like I’m Scrooge McDuck over here. Why don’t we do the bake sale idea? At the dance next week.”

“No way,” Ben groused, shaking his head. “Do you think anyone would believe we made over a thousand dollars selling mini muffins?”

“Good point. No, they wouldn’t.” Richie thought about it for a minute.

School dances were a honey pot for money-making opportunities. On top of every boy in school attending, they would have a few hundred girls milling around, plus various deep-pocketed alumni returning for homecoming. The adults were the smartest ticket, he figured.

“We could take alumni donation boosters. Tell them the truth: it’s for the baseball team, blah blah. Everyone loves stupid sports. Then we pad the amounts with extra cash. Make it look like all the stuffed shirt old-timers gave a couple hundred more than they really did.”

“We’d have to like, type up something that looked official,” Mike said slowly, chewing on the cuticle of his thumb around his words, “but that idea could actually work.”

Ben leaned onto one ass cheek and reached under himself, the bleachers creaking slightly under the movement. He pulled a small notepad and pencil out of his back pocket. “So, we’ll start tomorrow?” Scribbling against his knee, he ticked off the list of _To Do’s_ aloud:  

“We have to get to the computer lab and make up a professional-looking thing for the donation request. Get envelopes and a clipboard. Permission to both _hold_  a bake sale _and_  use the kitchen at some point before Saturday to make whatever—brownies or something—”

“It’s funny that your first thought is brownies,” Richie began, taking the cue to casually insert his own personal agenda, but Mike corrected him immediately:

“His first thought was mini-muffins, Rich.”

Rolling his eyes, Richie backtracked. “Okay, whatever, it’s funny that your _second_    thought is brownies, because—”

Ben cut Richie off at the pass. He said: “No,” firmly yet plainly, without looking up from his pad.

“No what?” Richie asked, even though he was pretty sure he got the message.

“No, we’re not selling pot to fund the architecture club.” Ben said it in a normal-volume speaking voice. Anyone sitting close to them could have heard.

 _“Jesus,_  Benny.” Richie whipped his head around to check if anyone was listening. They seemed to be in the clear. Most of the boys were too invested in their own conversations or the cheerleaders to notice them. “Say it a little louder. Ever heard of discretion?”

“You ever heard of expulsion?” Ben bit back smartly. He cocked his head and pursed his lips, tapping his pencil in the air thoughtfully. “Oh, yeah, right. I think maybe you have.”

Mike slapped a hand over his mouth to hold back his laughter.

“Wow. That’s fucked up,” Richie said, grinning ear to ear while he attempted feigning grave personal injury. Ben had gotten off a really good one at his expense. “Here I thought we were pals.”

Ben shrugged and went back to writing his list. “We are. I’m an honest friend. S’true.”

“I’m gonna have to side with Ben on this one,” Mike said sheepishly. Gently, in what Richie was coming to understand as _typical Mikey fashion._  “We could probably make a lot of money doing that, but we all could get into really big trouble, too.”

It might have been true, that selling pot brownies at a major school event was a terrible idea. He should have known that Ben and Mike wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. Too rich for their blood. But the matter wasn’t settled yet in Richie’s mind. He’d been rattling the idea around in his brain for a whole two evenings and wasn’t quite ready to let go of it. Beverly’s older cousin had a recipe and a connect. She was willing to do all the prep work if Richie handled the point of sale and went halvsies on the payout. And there were customers. Plenty.

Richie let them think he had dropped the idea. He didn’t need their approval or permission.  “You guys are probably right,” he said. “It’s like one of those cartoons where the guy has an angel and a devil on each shoulder, except, y’know, there’s two angels saying the same thing.”

“What a sap,” Ben said with a grin. He giggled at the affronted, open-mouthed gape Richie gave him, and flapped one hand towards home plate as he tucked his notepad away with the other. “Save it. They’re starting.”

They were talking so much they almost missed the Blazers’ starting pitch. All in all, the team let Lincoln get away with four runs in the top of the first inning. Bill was rusty and inconsistent to start out. He walked the lead-off hitter to first base, then miraculously struck out the next batter. Once he found his rhythm, he threw smooth fastballs, and the opposing team cracked pitch after pitch far and high.

The Blazers’ outfield was a mess. The boy stationed in right field (Eddie’s preferred position, Richie knew) flubbed an easy catch and cost them an out.

Eddie raised his arms in frustration several times, probably wishing he was in the outfield, though he was an undeniable asset at second base. He nabbed the last two outs unassisted by leaping in the air to easily catch a ball that would have smacked him in the face if he were a foot taller, and then immediately charged down the baseline to tag the overly eager baserunner heading towards second base in one shot.

It was such a fast, smooth move, Richie almost didn’t believe it happened. Stanley put Eddie in a jovial headlock, knocking off his hat. Everyone was on their feet, swaying the bleachers. Wild cheers. Richie screamed along with them. Incoherent nonsense. He couldn’t help it.

“He’s amazing,” he said hoarsely as he sat back down, not sure who he was telling, because Mike and Ben weren’t listening.

They were still standing and shouting into the din as the Blazers made their way to the bench. As Bill wrapped and arm around Eddie’s shoulders and squeezed tight. As Richie was drenched in a puddle of jealousy. He wouldn’t get to congratulate Eddie or hug him or knock off his hat and ruffle his soft hair until the game was over. There wasn’t time to dwell on that.

Eddie picked up a metal bat and whiffed it at the air, warming up while Lincoln—the Bulldogs—based up. He stepped up to the plate and knocked the bat against his right cleat.

From a distance, standing in front of the crouched, beefy mound of Lincoln’s catcher and the undertaker-esque silhouette that was the umpire, Richie's roommate looked very small. Small but confident. Eddie’s face was tipped up, the brim of his cap just barely shading his big eyes. He swung the bat half-way, lining it up just over home plate once, twice, three times, then he cocked it back over his shoulder with a tiny wiggle of his ass while the pitcher and catcher exchanged their show of pointy-fingered symbols.

Richie sucked in a lungful of oxygen, cupped his hands around his mouth and screeched: “MURDER THE BALL, EDS!” unable to hold it back, making several boys close to him jump with surprise and shoot dirty looks over their shoulders. It was too far away for him to tell, but he thought he saw Eddie smile. 

 _Worth it._  

“Thanks a lot, Richie,” Mike groaned, knuckling at the side of his head, “now my ear drum is blown out.” 

“A thousand apologies, Mikey.” Richie’s hands came down and slapped a nervous beat over both of his thighs. His left palm connected with something hard in his jeans’ pocket: Eddie’s inhaler. 

After chapel, they had both returned to their room. While Richie was changing out of his uniform, Eddie left for the locker room in a rush, the baby blue puffer forgotten on the top of his desk. Richie had squirreled it away for safe keeping and forgotten about it. 

Now he fingered over the little piece of plastic through denim, holding his breath during each of the pitcher’s wind ups. 

The first two pitches were called as balls. Eddie didn’t swing on either of them. He had tried to explain some baseball terms to Richie the night before: fastballs and curves and pop-flies and line drives and ground-rule doubles. Richie had mostly just nodded and let the information go in one ear and out the other as he watched the way Eddie wet his lips when he was thinking: by poking his pink tongue out into the corner of his mouth, sweeping it across his bottom lip before pressing both lips together, grazing them against one another to spread the moisture around. How was he supposed to learn anything with that going on?

To Richie, baseball would always probably be reduced to  _swing battie, hit ballie, run run run,_ and Eddie looked as cute putting it into practice as he did explaining it.

The third pitch was good. Eddie’s bat connected with a hollow crack, sending the ball far and low across the third baseline, out of reach of the short-stop defender, bouncing haphazardly into the grass.

“YEAH, EDS! FUCKIN’ A!!”

Richie was up out of his seat again, and he wasn’t the only one. He wasn’t the only one yelling, either. The bleachers kept swaying in waves from the movements of celebration. Mike and Ben were hooting. The home team went wild. Bill’s face was the same shade as his hair. He had the fingers of both his hands looped through the chains of the cyclone fence, shaking it until it clanked and rippled.

Eddie motored to first and stayed put. The next batter got him to third. He brought his A-game and his fearless diving slide.

The Blazers chipped away at the Bulldogs' lead inning by inning. Richie helped out the only way he knew how: by heckling all the away team’s batters, a skill he learned from _Ferris Bueller’s Day Off._

By the bottom of the third inning the score was _8 to 5: Blazers,_  and Eddie was responsible for the three runs they were up. Considering that, it was mighty curious to Richie when his roommate and friend, the breakout star, got creamed in the top of the fourth. Everything happened so fast that at first Richie questioned his own perception.

It began with a popup hit towards left field that the outfielder caught easily. He fired the ball to Eddie straightaway. The runner heading into second was a big mook of a goober who moved like a panther despite his towering height. He could have retreated to first base and tagged up when the ball was caught, but instead he charged second, dipping one shoulder down and increasing his speed. Right after the ball landed in Eddie’s glove, the goober shoulder-checked Eddie right in the chest, launching him ass over teakettle down into the grass behind second base. A few boys on the bleachers gasped and started booing. The umpire bellowed the call—automatic out for collision—as he ran towards Eddie with the coach on his heels.

Richie dragged himself up onto shaky legs and clamored down the middle of the bleachers before he knew what he was doing, shoving kids aside. Boys were yelling things at him. He didn’t care.

“Look out, asshole!”

“What, does he owe you money, Tozier?”

He ignored them all, running as fast as he could, beating both the coach and the ump to the spot where Eddie sat on the ground, panting out: “Are you okay, Eddie?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, equally breathlessly. His hat had been knocked off his head and was laying just behind him in the grass. Both his knees were turned up and his right hand covered his chest. The ball was still cozy in his mitt. He had held onto it through a spontaneous, involuntary somersault. “Knocked the wind out of me, is all.”

As soon as he knew Eddie was alright, Richie lifted his eyes to the runner. The desire to hit the fuckhead wasn’t just a thrumming bass drum in his abdomen, or a white-hot heat behind his eyes. It was something he could taste. The flavor of copper and salt on his tongue, bitter like dark chocolate.

“The fuck was that?!” he spat, clenching his fists and bracing himself to get slugged first. The guy looked like he had flunked about four grades and his left eye had a fading bruise wrapped around it: probably used to getting into fights, unlike Richie. “What do you think this is, bumper cars? Kid’s a foot shorter than you.”

The goober grinned down at Richie through a meaty excuse of a scabbed over split lip. “It was an accident,” he said, in a much higher voice than Richie pictured him having. “He was crowding the base.” Then he hocked a globber on the sand and hauled off towards the visiting team’s bench.  “I’m out anyway,” he called back over his shoulder casually.

Richie saw a mini action movie in his head: a montage of himself screaming bloody murder and rushing the scumbag, punching him in the back of the head until the dude hit the dirt like a crash dummy. But he just stood still, steaming silently with his fingernails digging half-moons into his palms. He watched the goober walk away; saw his stupid team give him ass-pats as he entered their bullshit dugout.

_None of those dumbshits are worth getting my teeth knocked out over. Or expelled. Or both._

A scattered applause and a few hoots rose up from both the crowd on the bleachers and the dugouts. Richie turned back to Eddie and realized belatedly that Billy and Stanley were there. They had already helped Eddie to his feet, dusted him off and got his hat back on his head. The umpire made tracks, heading back to his post behind the catcher.

“Alright, Tozier,” Coach Ryan said tiredly, fondling the whistle around his neck. “Shows over. Get the hell off the field.”

Richie didn’t budge. He was still itching to pound someone and Ryan happened to have a very punchable face. “My roommate just got clocked. I’m seeing if he’s okay.”

“I said:  _walk off_ ,  Tozier. Kaspbrak said he’s fine. Right, son?”

Eddie nodded quickly, his eyes catching Richie’s and holding on. He didn’t look fine.

Ryan took the nod as law. He waved his hands over the ground, calling attention to the sneaker prints that Richie left behind in the previously neatly raked baseline. “You need to go. We wear cleats out here for a reason.”

“You’re worried about the stupid sand?!” Richie couldn’t control the volume of his voice. Bill’s hand closed over his wrist and he shook it off. He knew he was about to get a punishment hurled his way. He was way past caring. “Eddie could have a concussion.”

Puffing a loud burst of air out of his mouth, Ryan fluttered a hand up to his balding head. He scratched at it as he turned his attention back to Eddie, and either found or feigned empathy. “It was some hit, Kaspbrak. Are you dizzy?”

Eddie stood there between Stan and Bill, looking equal parts small, uneasy and embarrassed. He still held one hand over his heart, like he was about to say the pledge of allegiance. “No,” he said, clipped and a little too high, “I’m not dizzy.”

The coach nodded. “Go to the infirmary, anyway. Have the nurse check your pupils with a light. Tozier, be sure Kaspbrak gets there. Move it.” He snapped his fingers at both Bill and Stan. “Everyone else: back to position.” Oblivious to the dirty looks Bill and Stan gave him, he turned and made his way towards the cyclone fence, probably eager to stick his thumb back up his ass.

Bill muttered a curse under his breath and rolled his eyes at the coach’s back. He placed a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “You ruh-really okay?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Eddie smiled with one side of his mouth. He let go of his chest to pull the ball out of his glove and handed it off to Bill. “Don’t let them get the lead back.”

“We won’t.” Stan grinned and patted Eddie on the arm. “Just get back here, quick. We need you.”

 

*

 

The clinic wing was a ghost town. Eddie hadn’t said much on the way there. He held it together pretty well in the main foyer, but when they approached the frosted glass outer doors of the weekend nurse’s office, his breathing went shallow. He backed away from the entrance, blanching, his jumpy eyes searching back and forth like an animal caught in a trap.

“Richie, I know I have to but—  I can’t go in there.”

Richie heard the fear in his voice. It was almost louder than the high whistle that escaped his throat.

“They’re… gonna call muh-my mother.” Eddie patted fumbling fingers at the waist of his pinstripe uniform pants and panted jagged, unfinished exhales. His eyes widened so much they looked like they might pop out. “My inhaler doesn’t fit in these pants. I left it—  Fuck… Richie, I can’t… breathe.” He grabbed loosely for Richie’s elbow, but his fingers didn’t catch hold.

“Woah, here.”  Richie took charge, gripping onto both of Eddie’s upper arms, guiding him backwards and down until the smaller boy was sitting on the hallway bench. “You’re gonna be fine, kid.” He stuck his hand into his front pocket and pulled out the little plastic life-saver.

Eddie’s shoulders and cheeks went slack, his eyelashes fluttering with pure relief. He accepted the inhaler and shook it vigorously before he took a gasping draw off the mouthpiece. It did the trick it was meant to, calming his attack. A barely audible hum left his throat and he looked up at Richie, his confused brown eyes asking the question. 

“ _Why do you have my inhaler?”_

Feeling more embarrassed than he had on the summer afternoon when his mother walked in on him cranking it to the  _Robocop_   issue of  _Starlog_   magazine, Richie tried his best to explain himself. “You forgot it on your desk when you left for the game.” It took effort to look Eddie in the face. Those doe eyes continued staring, going right through him. Really seeing him, maybe in a way that no one else ever had. “Been a little while since I saw you need to use it, but… In case, y’know?”

After a couple deep breaths, Eddie gave him a grateful little smile. “Thank you.”

“Anytime, Eds.” Richie was socked in the jaw by the strongest urge to bend down, grab onto Eddie’s face and plant a kiss on the center of his lower lip. Instead, he sat beside Eddie and folded in on himself, sticking his hands in between his knees and pulling his shoulders taught to make himself smaller. “You really  _really_   okay? Your head, I mean.”

“My head is fine,” Eddie said, lips still curled into that smile that made him a dead ringer for one of Santa’s elves. “Really-really.” He held a hand over his heart and pressed it into his breastplate until the impish smile crimped into a grimace. “ _This_   hurts, though.” After that admission his eyes seemed glassier, as if letting Richie in on how bad he felt gave him permission to look the part. He let go of his chest and sighed.

“Is that the kind of knockin’ around you like?” Richie asked, thinking about what Eddie had told him up on the roof of the movie theater. His secrets. How he privately enjoyed the rough nature of sports.

“I didn’t  _like_   it,” Eddie said, shaking his head quickly, “like I wouldn’t have wished for it to happen, but it was a rush, I guess.” He played with his inhaler, rolling it back and forth between his fingers. “I bet it was exciting for everyone who was watching the game, too.”

“Not for me, it wasn’t.” Richie let the words slip out too quickly. He rubbed a hand over his mouth and felt Eddie’s heavy stare again, searching him. He half expected to hear:  _“Why do you care so much?”_ but Eddie didn’t say anything. “Let me see what he did,” Richie said, his eyes trailing down to the embossed patch on the front of Eddie’s baseball shirt.

Eddie’s lower jaw closed with a snap, and it pushed up into his upper one unnaturally to wrinkle his chin. He looked so uncomfortable that it almost made Richie laugh. They had each seen the other without shirts—it kind of came along with the territory, being roommates and all—but Eddie always faced his bed when he changed. Richie had only seen glimpses here and there, just enough to know that Eddie had nothing to be ashamed of. He was built solidly, unlike Richie, who was possibly a scarecrow in another life, and his skin had a healthy glow, also unlike Richie, who could have been mistaken for a long lost descendant of _Snow White._

“Okay, if you don’t want me to see, it’s fine.”

“No, you’re right. Tell me if it looks bad before I go in there.” He opened the snaps on his uniform top and pulled the neckline of his undershirt down to expose his left clavicle. Just beneath the bone, his usually olive skin had a blotchy red patch the approximate size of a grapefruit, in the center of which was a blackish-purple oval that reminded Richie of the buttons on his father’s best dress coat.

“That motherfucker,” Richie whispered, that hot rage enveloping his neck and pounding in his ears once again. “I shoulda punched him right in his stupid face.”

“And get yourself in trouble for nothing.” Eddie let go of his collar and the fabric snapped back. “He was right; I was crowding the base. If I had caught the ball a little sooner—” He shook his head and looked down at the floor. “Guy was a faster runner than I guessed.”

Considering that Richie knew so little about baseball, he knew even less when it came to the courtesy rules between baserunners and defenders. He knew a couple things about human decency, though. “You crowding the base doesn’t give him the right to plow you.”

Eddie’s breathing sounded like it was under control. He blasted another quick burst of medicine down his throat anyway. “Look, I don’t even care about it, okay? All I care about now is that the nurse is gonna call my mother, tell her what happened—" he took off his hat and tossed it upside down on the bench beside himself, dropping his inhaler into the valley of it with a thunk  “— _how_   it happened—and she’ll ask to be transferred to the Headmaster and have him pull me off the team.”

“They wouldn’t let you go that easy,” Richie said. It was the God’s honest truth.

Saint Stan’s didn’t have much to offer when it came to team sports. Baseball and soccer filled up the fall schedule. The action moved inside while volleyball and basketball occupied the winter months. Tennis and track were big in the spring. That was it. No football. No rugby. No lacrosse. Nothing too rough. Full-contact sports weren’t huge in a school dominated by a nerd population. Baseball was the biggest draw when it came to crowd pleasing, and Eddie had proved that morning that he was a star in the making. The Administration would fight to keep him on the roster, no matter how much of a stink Eddie’s parents made.

“We’re up by three runs out there. You’re one of the best players we have.”

“ _We?_  “  Eddie kicked one cleated foot back and forth, smiling down at it. “What a sports-fan you are all of a sudden.”

Richie blushed for what felt like the thousandth time that day and slapped himself in the forehead. “Fuck, I’ve only been all rah-rah-rah for an hour and a half and I’m already talking like a meathead.” He dropped his hand and changed his voice to a mediocre impression of the sports callers he had heard blaring out of the speakers of his dad’s transistor radio in the garage when he was a kid. “We’re gonna go all the way to the pennant, champ,” he warbled, pinching Eddie’s cheek, “bruised chesticles or no! ”

“You’re not a meathead,” Eddie said, giggling and pushing Richie’s hand away from his face half-heartedly, “but you were yelling louder than Lincoln’s cheerleaders out there.” His giggles tapered into a series of pathetic, drawn out groans. “I really don’t want to go in there, Rich.”

“To see the nurse? If it’s nothing serious they won’t call your house.”

“They won’t?”

“Nope. High fevers, broken bones, concussions, stitches: Mommy gets a ring. Everything else? It’s like the Wild West. You get some Motrin or ‘Tussin and told to stay in your bed.”

Eddie picked up his cap. “You’re saying that like it’s a bad thing, but that sounds really…” he sighed and handed the hat over to Richie. “Great.” He stood up and approached the door but didn’t enter it. “Would— Would you come in with me?”

_Are you nuts?  I’d carry you on my back to the nearest hospital if I had to._

“Yeah, Eds.” Richie got up and quickly pocketed the inhaler. He put the baseball cap on his own head, tilting it so the brim stuck out sideways, and followed Eddie into the office. “If they don’t give me the boot on sight.”

Private school clinics always smelled the same: like bleach and mentholated lozenges. They were usually staffed ‘round the clock with a few nurses who worked in lengthy, rotating shifts, and Saint Stan’s was no exception. Richie had never once had to go to the nurse’s office for an injury in all his years in private school, but illness spread like wildfire through dormitories. At least twice a year, three-quarters of any given school got taken down by the same cold, and Richie found himself sitting on familiar butcher paper with a head full of snot and a tongue depressor in his mouth.

Though the clinic itself was large, the weekend nurse’s office was tiny. It held a desk, a small examining area with two tables, and a few filing cabinets. A door in the back of the room led to a larger infirmary with a long hall full of sick beds and stocked supply closets.

The nurse on duty was sitting at the desk, reading from a paperback novel. Nurse Joy. A young black lady with a loud laugh and short braids that she kept pulled back in a clip. She was the nicest option out of all the staff that could have been there, and Richie breathed a sigh of relief.

“Two for one?” Joy smiled crookedly and tucked a folded scrap of paper into her book to save her place.  “This early in the semester, Richie?”

“No, I’m not—”

“It’s just for me,” Eddie said.

Removing the hat with a flourish, Richie bowed to Joy like he was in the presence of royalty and explained the situation in an English accent that was not his strong point. “The lad requires an escort. Doth the lady protest?”

“Nope. You’re good.” Joy stood up and pointed at a bare pine stool in the corner of the examining area. “So long as you sit down, shut up, and don’t touch anything.”

Richie zipped his lips closed with a swipe of two fingers and speed-walked over to take a seat. He put the hat back onto his head, turning it backwards.

Nurse Joy bustled into the examining area and patted one of the tables. “Don’t be shy, honey,” she told Eddie warmly. “What’s your last name?”

“Kaspbrak?” He climbed up onto the table and sat stiffly with his hands folded in his lap. “With a K.”

“Kaspbrak,” she repeated absently as she opened the middle drawer of a filing cabinet and flipped through the tabs. “New?”

“Yeah.”

Joy pulled out an unblemished manila folder and opened it. “Edward Francis?”

Richie barked an uncontrollable laugh. “Edward Francis?!” he asked, smiling so wide that it hurt his face. He clapped a hand over his mouth a second too late.

“What did I say, Richie?” The nurse didn’t look up from the folder. “One strike.”

Throwing Richie a soft-edged dagger of a glare, Eddie told the nurse: “Call me Eddie,” without breaking eye contact with his roommate.

“Nice to meet you, Eddie. I'm Joy. What brings you here this afternoon?”

“I was playing baseball and a baserunner knocked into me. Coach Ryan wants you to check if I have a concussion.”

Again, Richie couldn’t restrain his tongue. “No way, he’s downplaying it. He got creamed by a goober bigger than the Hoover Dam. Dude slammed him in the chest and he went flying; some Wrestlemania shit.”

“Strike two,” Joy said softly. She collected a few items from the station beside the examining table and got down to business, sticking a thermometer in Eddie’s mouth and shining a tiny metal flashlight into his eyes while she waited for the temperature reading, first in his left and then his right. “Your pupils are dilating normally. You’re not concussed.” She put her hands on either side of his neck and pressed her fingers into his flesh. “Any pain in your arms or legs?”

Eddie shook his head side to side.  “Mmn-mmn.”

Joy’s hands slid up behind Eddie’s head and into his hair. He hissed and almost spit out the thermometer. “Is it tender right here?”

He nodded.

“You have a little bump.” She took the thermometer out of his mouth and held it up. “Temperature is normal. Can you take your shirt off? So I can see where this  _Wrestlemania_   _shit_   happened.”

“Okay.” Eddie slid his already unbuttoned top shirt off and laid it over his lap but hesitated on removing the long-sleeved undershirt. His gaze sneaked across the room to meet Richie’s again, but this time it wasn’t a look of fond defiance. He looked shy and nervous.

Slipping his glasses off, Richie promptly crossed his eyes, hard enough that if his mother were present she might have scolded that he would be sorry when they stuck that way. It was worth the risk, because it got the reaction he hoped for: Eddie smiled and seemed to relax.

Hooking his arm up over his head, Eddie gripped onto the fabric between his shoulder blades to peel the shirt up and off. He held it to his front, so that only the very top of his chest and shoulders were visible. The nurse sucked her teeth at the wide black-and-blue forming on his chest.

Richie put his glasses back on. Eddie’s button-sized bruise had grown larger in only a few minutes. It was closer to the size of a plum. Clenching his jaw, Richie forced himself to keep quiet as a fresh wave of anger swelled inside him. He was hit with all sorts of really terrible ideas: letting the air out of the Bulldog’s bus tires, going back to the baseball field and starting a fight with the entire team, pulling the fire alarm to halt the game so the bastards couldn’t win. None of it would make Eddie (or himself) feel better about what happened. So he just sat there.

“May I?” Joy held her hands out to Eddie, motioning the question. When Eddie nodded, she put her fingertips on his sides and felt her way around his back and up, pressing into the base of his rib cage. “Tell me if anything hurts.” After she covered most of his torso, kindly feeling his front through the shirt he was using as a shield, she removed her hands. “I don’t think anything is broken.”

“I don’t think so, either.” He fingered over the center of the bruise and winced. “It only hurts right here, if I push on it.”

“Then maybe don’t push on it,” she said, making Richie chuckle. Joy grinned and opened a drawer beside the examining table. “I can give you some Motrin to take every six hours and some Arnica as a topical pain reliever.” She pulled out a handful of single dose pill packs, a couple instant cold-packs, and a small tube of ointment. “Are you supposed to have practice tomorrow?”

Eddie nodded. “Almost every day.” He pulled his undershirt over his head.

“No practice or Phys-Ed Monday or Tuesday. I’ll give you excuse notes.” Joy went back to her desk and sat, scribbling in Eddie’s chart as she spoke. “Come back here Wednesday morning after breakfast and we’ll see if you’re clear to play. If you need anything else before then—more ice packs, or if it feels worse in any way, come back. Any time. We’re staffed twenty-four hours.”

“And you’re not gonna call my house.” It wasn’t a question. It was a demand. Richie caught that.

Joy caught it, too. She raised her head, tipping it to the side. “I’m not required to. Not for this. If you want me to, I ca—”

“No,” Eddie broke in, firm. “I don’t.”  Firm and a little urgent.

Just based on the way his friend’s eyes looked, Richie kind of wanted to tack Eddie’s mother onto the list of people he needed to beat up, crimes unknown and sight unseen.  

 “Then I won’t.” Joy bent her head again, writing out excuse notes on her pad. “This will be in your chart, though. If your parents ask to see it, they can.”

Eddie didn’t respond to that. He chewed on his lower lip while he hopped down off the table, slipping his uniform shirt back on without buttoning it up. “Can I go back to the game? I know I can’t play, but—”

“You can go sit on the bench if you want. I’d like you to go take a hot shower and get some rest instead." Nurse Joy shrugged. "It's your choice.” She gave Eddie his excuse slips, put the medicine into a little bag and sent them on their way, praising Richie for his decorum as they left the office. 

 

Eddie walked with purpose until they got to the exit door that led to the path back to the athletic field. He idled there with his hand on the door handle, sliding one cleated foot forward and back like a reluctant child.

Richie stopped walking and shielded his eyes with one hand, making like he was searching high and low. “Do you like the clinic so much you never wanna leave?”

“Funny," Eddie deadpanned. "I’m trying to decide if I should ride the bench, or do like the nurse said.” Riding the bench would have been the tough-shit thing to do, and Eddie was a tough little shit. His unwillingness to walk outside spurred Richie into making him an offer.

“If you don’t wanna go back to the game, I’m with you.”

A soft, self-conscious smile lit up Eddie's face. He let go of the door and tucked one arm across his middle. “You’re with me?” he asked, ducking his head slightly.

“Uh huh.” Richie smiled back, wide and goofy and probably showing too many of his teeth. “If you wanna go back to the room and take it easy, that’s what we'll do.”

Eddie frowned suddenly, pressing his lips together. Richie had pieced together that whenever his roommate was weighing a decision, it showed all over his face. Crinkles and lines in his forehead. Pouty mouth and crunched eyebrows. It was unfairly cute. “I don’t want all of them to think I’m a wimp,” he said finally.

“No one thinks that, Eddie.” Realizing that he was still wearing Eddie’s cap, Richie reached up and pulled it off by the brim. “You got tossed by a guy twice your size” –he transferred the hat over to the smaller boy’s head— “and got right up like it was nothing.” Pulling the brim down so it covered Eddie’s eyes and nose, he shook it side to side playfully. “And if anyone does think you’re a wimp, they fuckin’ suck anyway; who cares what they think?”

The smile returned to Eddie’s mouth. He adjusted the brim, lifting it up and freeing his face. The tops of his cheeks had turned pink. “Then let’s go back. To our room, I mean. Not the game.”

“Okay.” It was nonsensical, but Eddie declaring their dorm room _our room_   left Richie with a squishy feeling in his abdomen. Like they were no longer just roommates decided by a random shuffle of fate. Like it was _theirs_   because they both wanted it to be theirs. Something they willingly shared. That urge to kiss Eddie was back with a vengeance. Some day Richie might not be able to resist it. “Let’s go.”

 

*

 

Richie had his headphones on, only covering his left ear. The blaring music was interspersed with the sounds of Eddie snoring. Every once in a while, the snores took a sharp, loud turn and Eddie would mumble a bit, the sound tugging the corners of Richie’s mouth up involuntarily.

He tried to keep his attention on the essay he had put off writing for three days. Tried to resist the overwhelming desire to turn around and look at his sleeping roommate every thirty seconds. Those pink cheeks and uncharacteristically wild chestnut curls—both a product of falling asleep fresh out of the shower.

Eddie had done exactly like the nurse suggested. He came back from the bathroom with wet hair, wearing loose jeans and a sweatshirt. Curling up at the foot of his bed with his battered copy of _Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!,_  he passed out in record time with the paperback still held loosely in one hand. Richie let him sleep through the lunch bell and into the early evening. The kid would probably be up all night because of it, but Richie didn’t have the heart to disturb him.

He needed the rest. The nurse said he was fine. _He_   said he was fine. Richie didn’t buy it. Maybe Eddie was physically okay, but the game should have been his moment to shine. And it had been, until that shining moment was cut short by the hulking poster child for _Puberty Gone Wrong._

_Completely unfair. He deserved to win, and have ice water dumped on his head or whatever the fuck meathead sort of shit jocks do to celebrate._

The room had just begun bathing in the pink-golden light of the sunset when a soft knock on the door broke Richie out of his trance. The noise didn’t wake Eddie. Richie set his headphones down and moved quietly across the room to answer it.

Bill was on the other side, also showered and changed. His fists were bundled into his hoodie pocket. Sneaking a look at Eddie’s sleeping form, he asked: “How’s he feeling?”

He came to do his good captain’s duty, as expected. Checking up on his team. He did the same with his friends, and Richie guessed that Bill's visit had as much to do with Eddie’s collision as it did with finding out how Richie was handling the whole ordeal.  

“Beats me. He’s been sleeping for a while.” Richie slipped into the hallway and closed the door over behind himself. “Please tell me you massacred those assholes.”

“I wuh-wish. We lost. By tuh-two runs.” Bill sighed and leaned his spine against the door frame. “I don’t th-think I should even tell you this, beck-because you’ll probably do something stu-stupid, b-b-but… they were truh-trying to take him out of the g-game.”

Richie’s brow furrowed so deep it obstructed his vision. “I fuckin’ knew that shit wasn’t an accident. That motherfu—” He shook his head hard, almost knocking the glasses off his face, trying to shake the anger away while subconsciously hatching a loose plan to turn his next sneak-out into a _trash-Lincoln’s-locker-room_   party. “How'd you find out?”

Chuckling humorlessly, Bill rubbed at his eyes before he answered. “One of their cheerlih-leaders came over to fluh-flirt with Stuh-Stanley after the guh-game and it slipped. They s-saw how good Eddie is. We were wuh-winning because of him. As soon as he was guh-guh-gone we crumb-bled.”

“I shoulda punched him,” Richie said, low and resolute. _I could have punched him. He was right there. Why didn’t I?_  he thought, remembering that goober’s fake ass smile. Those fat liver lips and that bruised left eye. “Made both his eyes match.”

“Yeah, ruh-real smart, Tuh-T-Tozier. That would have s-s-solved everyth-thing.”

Their eyes met. Bill smiled.

“You like him,” he said simply. He didn’t stutter a lick.

“I like him,” Richie echoed, telling it to the hole in the toe of his sock, practically whispering. Bill knew. Stan knew. He was pretty sure Ben and Mike had an inkling, especially after what had happened at the game. “I like him a whole lot.”

“D-d-does he nuh-know?”

“I don’t think so.” Richie fluffed at his hair, reliving the past forty-eight hours in a matter of seconds. He simmered in  _I-came-to-class-with-no-clothes-on-dream_ levels of embarrassment thinking about the way he had been acting all day. “Fuck. I’m so fucking obvious about it, right?”

“The muh-most obvious.” Bill grinned as he stood up straight. "D-d-did you have fun before that ha-happened?" When Richie gave him a blank look, Bill groaned. His blue eyes held something heavy in them. Something melancholy. "At your fuh-first game."

Richie cringed. "Oh. Shit, Billy. Yeah. Look I'm sorry I never came befo--"

"Nah. S'okay." Bill inched away, moving towards the stairs. “Why don't we all suh-s-sit to-guh-gether, at suh-suh—” He rolled his eyes. “Dinner. Your new friends, too.”

Richie dug his teeth into his tongue, several wordings of the same general question working themselves out in his head:

_“Our side or their side?”_

_“Your side or my (new) side?”_

The left side of the dining hall was Eddie and company’s side. The right was Bill and Stan’s. Richie didn’t want to distinguish one side or the other as _his_   side. He considered both sides _his_   side, so he chose his words carefully. “On the left side of the hall or the right?”

“Me and St-Stan’ll go early and gruh-grab a table in between.” Bill walked away without saying goodbye. When he got to the stairwell he turned around. “Just tell him you like him,” he said, walking backwards. “Wuh-worked for me.”

Richie reached for the door handle behind his back. “Didn’t ask for any advice, Billy.”

“No,” he called as he started walking down the stairs, “but you nuh-need it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> houston, we have reached the pining. i'm still alive and writing this, next chapter is the homecoming dance. thank you for reading <333

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i hope you like! talking to people is hard but i'm @speakslowtellmelove on tumblr


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